


Zayn's Body

by jaylanic



Category: Jennifer's Body (2009), One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Astral Projection, Demon Zayn, Demonic Possession, Demons, Explicit Language, F/F, F/M, Human Sacrifice, Innocent Liam, M/M, Multi, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Popular Zayn, Soulmates, Supernatural Elements, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2018-09-14 00:00:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 366,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9147994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaylanic/pseuds/jaylanic
Summary: Zayn is an asshole to everyone. Except for Liam. But when a demon takes over the body of the hottest guy in school after he gets too friendly with a sketchy band, Zayn Malik’s friends go to hell and back, literally, trying to save his soul.





	1. Inferno

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic ahhh! I am so sorry for any grammar or spelling errors as I don't have an actual editor. 
> 
> It is based off the movie "Jennifer's Body" for the most part with greek mythology added into it. Mainly the beginning. Also, I am not from Manningtree, where the story takes place but this is fiction so yeah. Enjoy :)
> 
> My Tumblr is jaylaisdreaming or jaylanic ^_^

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hell is a teenaged boy.

 

Just kidding. They’re angels. Well, one is anyways. Most people would’ve probably said it was Liam Payne.

 

Liam didn’t do drugs or have sex or swear like most teens did but he knows his life very far from perfect. Especially after the night his entire life got turned into an even bigger freak show than what it already was.

 

It’s a fact of life that the most epic parties are always thrown by college kids, partying away their eternal youth to channel the torture of living in the prison that is their young, hormonal bodies. Or, you know, just to get drunk. Even in the small town of Manningtree with a population of less than 700 people (200 of that being teenagers), one party can rock the whole world.

 

Before all eyes were on them, the kids of Manningtree were just like any other normal teens. Well, as normal as teens living in the travel hot spot for the devil can be.

 

See, the name Manningtree is thought to have come from “many trees” because most of the land is covered in woods. As the legend goes, groups of supposed “witches” would gather all over the woods to have meetings with the devil himself, who apparently gets off on collecting human souls for favours, preferably ones in young bodies.

 

It briefly sparked a crisis of a shit ton of human sacrifices being made some 400 years ago. Back when people were dumb enough to believe that if they gave their neighbours virgin daughter to the beast, they’d be spared getting the plague or something. Needless to say, that kind of legacy didn’t attract a ton of tourists. Not the kind with good intentions anyways.

 

Before the party that shocked the world happened, all 280 high school students of the town of Manningtree were nothing more than their yearbook pictures. Like Liam, the not-so-star football player, cheesing in his picture with huge his huge glasses and metal braces. He got his braces off a few months ago but he could never escape the glasses… or his photo for year 11 that cemented the worst year of his life.

 

It all started at a football match. Liam spent mostly all of their games sitting on the bench.

 

Not that that was a bad thing for him. He got to sit near the cheerleaders, which he definitely wasn’t complaining about. Most football teams didn’t have cheer squads but Zayn Malik, the super fucking hot male cheerleader, made his own rules and didn’t care who had anything to say about it.

 

He assembled his own cheer squad the moment his best friend Liam made the team to cheer just for him. He wasn’t really expecting to be cheering for everyone _but_ Liam but hey, Liam admired the gesture anyways, especially since Zayn wasn't athletic in the _least_ bit. He enjoyed watching them cheer more than kicking around some dumb ball anyways.

 

As a game goes on in full swing, Niall Horan, star football captain gets injured and has to sit out the last half of the game. Liam almost thinks they’re gonna _finally_ put him in but, they instead substitute the fucking _water boy,_ getting him a jersey and cleats and shoving the wimpier Tom Harlock onto the field. Liam looks at the coach from the bench, completely confused. He didn’t even know they could do that.

 

After arguing with his coach for 10 minutes, Niall gets him to leave it, sitting back down in his usual spot on the bench.

 

“Hey don’t take it personally mate, it's probably because you can't wear your glasses on the field.” Niall assured him as he sat next to him “You’ll get your time to shine real soon.”

 

Liam only rolls his eyes, looking begrudgingly at how Tom timidly stands on the side, looking like he’s gonna shit his pants.

 

“Yeah. I’m sure.” He grumbled. Niall was probably right. Liam didn't have contact lenses and wearing his eyeglasses on the field was prohibited. He was almost legally blind without them. Just as he's letting his insecurities get the best of him, he hears his name a few yards away.

 

Liam didn't have contact lenses and wearing his eyeglasses on the field was prohibited. He was almost legally blind without them, especially with bright lights. His eyes were too sensitive with the beams on the field so, he actually be blind without his glasses if he tried to play football on this field.

 

Just as he's letting his insecurities get the best of him, he hears his name a few yards away.

 

“Hey, Lima!” Zayn calls him from where he’s squatting on the ground with the girls in their tiny pink cheer outfits, waving as he smiles. Liam’s saltiness about still being benched because of his shitty eyesight is seemingly forgotten as a goofy smile plays across his face, waving back at him.

 

Zayn gestures to his cleanly shaven goatee then points skywards, meaning “chin up”. Liam grins wide, nodding. Zayn was always so supportive about everything Liam did, he couldn’t stay too upset about his situation. Just knowing Zayn was there to cheer for him was enough to make him glad he was on the team at all. He even had their uniforms made pink because that was Liam's favorite color despite their school colours being blue and orange.

 

“Is that your girlfriend you’re making heart eyes at or your boyfriend?” Niall says, grinning.

 

Liam blinks, looking away from the cheerleaders to look at Niall.

 

“Sorry?” He asks, confused. Niall points at the cheerleaders, specifically at Sophia, waving over at them. She was one the opposite side of the line as Zayn. Liam always forgets she’s also on the squad to be honest but he couldn’t help that. Liam smiles and waves back. Zayn looks over a Sophia and rolls his eyes.

 

“You didn’t even notice her did you?” Niall laughs, seeing right through him acting like he was looking at Sophia the whole time .

 

“Ass over tit, you are.”

 

Liam rolls his own eyes at Niall, mumbling a half-hearted “piss off” under his breath. Niall and Zayn were pretty tight. He didn't need to have him going back and telling Zayn he said something that he didn't really say.

 

“Admit it,” Niall persists with the teasing “You love him,”

 

Like that.

 

Liam looks at him like he’s just asked the dumbest question

 

“Of course I love him. He’s my best friend.”

 

A perfect answer.

 

Niall picks up his hand, showing Liam his own wrist

 

“What kind of “best friends” get matching tattoos?” He asks, pointing to the moon crescent inside his wrist. Liam snatches his hand away.

 

"The kind that have a connection to you will never understand" he retorts, looking back at Zayn who is now leaning over the stands, talking to some jock pretty-boy with long blonde curls from another school, in his signature flirt mode.

 

Zayn twists his finger in one of the boy’s curls. The blonde flips his locks dramatically, smirking as he leans in close and says something in Zayn's ear.    
  
Zayn’s bum is sticking up in the air as leans in closer as well to hear what he's saying. When he replies, the blonde starts to laugh. He pulls Zayn closer to him by his wrist, making Zayn laugh this time. His hand disappears below the blonde’s waist then.

 

Liam only frowns and focuses back on the game, rubbing over his moon tattoo absently. Zayn has a sun in the same place.

 

Most people didn't understand why the hottest, most popular guy in school would associate with a dork like Liam. The only reason people knew Liam existed was because he was always around Zayn. They were virtually complete opposites but, he didn't need anyone else to understand. He and Zayn had been best friends their entire lives. Nothing anyone thought of them was ever gonna change that.

 

Liam looks over at them again. Zayn’s friend happens to look up as well. He smirks when he and Liam make eye contact and looks back at Zayn as they continue to talk until Zayn lets him pull him up over the stand completely. His hand is all over Zayn's ass as he helps him climb over the fence then leads Zayn away until they disappear under the bleachers. If that guy was who Liam thinks it was, he's pretty sure he had a girlfriend called Danielle that went to their school. He couldn't at least be more discreet about it?  
  
After their team wins, Niall invites Liam to a party that he's having at his house to celebrate later which was strange. No one ever invited Liam to parties.  
  
"Everyone is coming, and there's gonna be a sick band playing." Niall tells him as they're changing in the locker rooms but, Liam declines.  
  
"Sofa and I are doing something tonight."  
  
Everyone in the locker room makes that obnoxious cooing sound children make when something scandalous happens. Liam rolls his eyes.  
  
"Are you guys celebrating your big win tonight?" Andy asks, knowing full well that Liam sits on the bench every game. Everyone laughs. Liam only adjusts his glasses self-consciously.

 

“Maybe she got pink balloons for him. That's your favorite color, right Payno?”

 

You know how you can block people online? Liam could do that with his brain at will. He glosses over them mocking him easily. He's had a lot of practice.

 

He developed a dissociative disorder when he was a kid but he wasn't technically diagnosed and treated for it until he was 15. Bullying and other traumatics things throughout his life evolved into parts of his brain shutting off usually when he gets stressed or anxious but sometimes it triggers randomly. Or whenever he wants. It involves bouts of detachment, feeling no emotions, thoughts and sensations, even sounds at times.

 

Sometimes it’s almost like he leaves his body totally and watches a movie of himself from the outside. Other times, he just feels totally dead inside, which is scary for people to see because it translate on his face when it happens.

 

It had a few other negatives, like hallucinations and moments where he'd be gone for hours or unable to feel anything for days but he didn’t make a huge deal out of it. Especially when he’s in the locker room where it actually helps.

 

Disassociating made him numb to a lot of things he'd later bury in something else. Usually stress eating and binge watching tv shows.

 

“We're probably gonna watch Netflix and chill out.” he mumbles, rummaging through his locker for his bag.

 

“ _Not that it's any of your business…”_

 

Andy and Stan exchange a look before they both come over to Liam and slam his locker closed. Liam closes his eyes when Andy roughly whips him around to face them.

 

“You wanna speak up bruv? Couldn't hear you.” Stan leans his ear down in Liam's face. Liam doesn't say anything, feeling himself shaking a little but his mind staying zoned out.

 

“Oh damn, I think he's dead again lads.”

 

He thought joining the football team 3 years ago would’ve stopped the bullying cause he'd be their teammate but if anything, it only intensified it, which intensified him disassociating all the time.

 

Whatever happens in these locker rooms stayed in the locker room so it made him more vulnerable to being cornered like this, except unlike before, there's no chance of anyone witnessing his murder.

 

No one on the team stops them as he's overlooked like usual, pretending like nothing is happening as they continue to talk around them about winning the game.

 

“Cat got your tongue now _big bird?”_ Andy makes like he's gonna jam his knuckle into Liam's stomach, making him flinch against his will.

 

They both laugh.

 

“Serious question though, how do you play football and still manage to have this fat fucking gut?” Stan asks.

 

“We should call him Snuffleupagus instead of big bird.” Olly chimes from across from them.

 

“No no, I think it's _Cookie_ _Monster_ lads.” Calvin tosses from somewhere in the room. Everyone laughs at him.

 

“I dunno why you idiots are laughing. You all obviously watch a lot of Sesame Street.” Niall is the only one who helps Liam out cause he’s the captain and they have to do what he says.

 

While Liam appreciates it, he's had enough of his weight everything wrong with him being pointed out for everyone to laugh at.

 

Liam walks away, blank faced, as their muffled laughter continues behind him, sounding a million miles away from him as he feels a million miles away from the ache in his chest. Niall stops him before he leaves.

 

“Hey, don't listen to them. They're just trying to get a reaction out of you.”

 

Liam already knows that. He wasn't gonna give them the satisfaction in getting one.

 

“You should come to the party! We're a team. We’re celebrating this _together_.”

 

Just as Liam starts shaking his head to politely decline, Andy just _has_ to make sure he gets his licks in on Liam.

 

“Why are you lying to him Nialler? Benchwarmers count as at _least_ half a player. Just let him go home and watch netflix like a good girl.”

 

He didn't want to go to their dumb party anyways.  
  
"Whatever. Tease all you want. Just remember that while you're getting stupidly pissed tonight, I'll be at my girl's house getting _laid_." He easily retorts, feeling a little bold. Andy's jaw drops. Liam didn't usually say anything them.

 

Everyone does the "oooh" thing again while Liam picks up his bag and leaves quickly before he gets his ass kicked, a satisfied smirk tugging at his lips on his way out.  
  
He drives to his girlfriend's house, a little nervously. He wasn't lying when he said he was getting laid. He and Sophia had been dating for a few months now and they still hadn't had sex. Not that there was any rush. It was just that... Liam was a virgin and Sophia wasn't. He just turned 17 years old this month and he’s still a fucking virgin, no doubt the only person in their year that was. It goes without saying that he was scared he wasn't gonna be any good. He doesn't even think he _wants_ to lose it to her, which was an even scarier thought.  
  
He leaves all these thoughts behind in his car, dropping it off at home then walking right across the street to Sophia's. Her living across the street was convenient. It gave him no time to back out of anything.  
  
Her parents are out of town so she'd planned for them to do it tonight, leaving the door unlocked so he'd just walk in. He yells upstairs that he's here when he comes inside. Sophia just tells him to come on up. As he walks up her narrow staircase, his fists unclench, all sweaty and gross.  
  
"Well that's attractive." He says to himself, shaking his head.  
  
Right before he enters her room, he takes a deep breath and swallows, deciding he'd look like less of a geezer without his thick round glasses on even if he can't see very well without them. Hell, that might help his case. Not that Sophia was ugly. She was beautiful, he just... he was just nervous. That's all.  
  
When he walks in, the lights are dimmed really low with only a few candles lit on her nightstand which isn't helping with Liam's sight at all. Sophia lays in the center of her bed, perched in an unnaturally splayed out position, wearing pale pink lingerie, a slight smirk perched across her lips. Wow. So they're just getting right into it.  
  
"Hey." Sophia greets him, her voice soaked in lust. Liam gulps, waving his fingers a little as he closes the door behind him.  
  
"Hiya." He squeaks. Sophia laughs, crawling across her bed to reach out and pull Liam in.  
  
"Why are you so far away?" She asks, tugging at his shirt  
  
" 'm not gonna bite... _too_ hard."  
  
Liam hiccups out a laugh.  
  
"Right I-- I know that." He says, wrapping and around her waist as he leans on the bed. She puts her arms around Liam's neck, scooting closer. Liam just holds her, eyes darting in between hers, slightly smudged.  
  
"Well?"  Sophia laughs lightly "Are you gonna kiss me or not?"  
  
Liam wastes no more time staring dumbly. He leans in and kisses her softly. Carefully. Its nice and safe. No tongue or anything. Sophia leans back, pulling Liam on top of her as she takes off his jacket, throwing it to the side and tries to unbutton his plaid shirt.

 

Liam keeps himself up over her on his elbows, sitting up so she can reach better, undoing his top. She doesn't manage to get it off completely as Liam dives in for another kiss, licking into her mouth, exploring a bit more than before. Sophia puts his hand over her breast and squeezes, wrapping her legs around his waist.  
  
When she tries to slip his hand under her bustier, Liam pulls away, breathing deeply.  Sophia's brow bunches together.  
  
"What's wrong?" She asks. Liam hesitates, looking at her for a moment. For a split second, he almost doesn't even recognize her face. Like he's in bed with a complete stranger before shaking his head, blinking rapidly.  
  
"Nothing." He assures her, kissing her again. She tries to turn them over so she's on top but, Liam only pins her down, kissing down her neck, making a reverent trail down to her stomach and over the pink underwear scantily covering her crotch.  
  
"Liam." Sophia gasps as he slowly begins to pull down her lace thong. He pauses, making eye contact with his lips kissing slowly around her thighs  
  
"Yes Sofa?" He asks softly. She leans down and pulls him back up her face.  
  
"I thought we were going to go all the way tonight?" She asks as she kisses his jaw. Liam presses their lips together.  
  
"We are. This is… um, foreplay." He assures her but she puts his hand under her bra this time.  
  
"I don't want foreplay." She counters “I want to have sex. _Now_ .” Liam pulls his hand away.  
  
"Well, I don't wanna do it just yet." He admits, trying to sound as gentle as possible but he still ends up regretting it instantly when Sophia looks at him like he's just called her a cow.  
  
"What?" She says sharply, sitting up. Liam sits up to, getting off of her.  
  
"What is it this time? Are you “feeling ill” again? Or is my room too warm for you like last time?"  
  
Liam sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose  
  
"Sofa, no I'm just--"  
  
"Are you not... sexually attracted to me? I mean, you never want to have sex. And when you say we will, you make up some dumb _excuse_ or we just do this," she gestures vaguely between them, frustrated

 

“Are we lesbians then?"  
  
Liam rubs his hand over his face roughly. This was not the first time they've had this discussion.  
  
"No--"  
  
"Then why don't you want to use your fucking dick? Or have you not got one?"  
  
"Oh my god Sophia!" Liam exclaims, grimacing.  
  
"You know I _hate_ it when you talk like this... Like I'm some kind of piece of _meat_!"

  
Sophia glares at him, like he's just insulted her entire life, standing up and angrily yanking on random sweats that happen to be laying around on the floor.

 

“Seriously. You sound like a girl.”  
  
“Sophia." Liam sighs, but she ignores him as she gets dressed.  
  
"I go through all this trouble, setting up the mood making everything _glowy_ and _pink_ the way you like, buying all these uncomfortable clothes, trying to be sexy for you and you're STILL unsatisfied!" She grumbles, blowing out the candles.  
  
"I never said that--"

"What else do I have to do? I didn't ask for a fucking girlfriend."  
  
Liam squints at her, totally baffled by her anger. It's like she just explodes whenever Liam doesn't wanna have sex. It’s not like they don't do _anything_ .  
  
"So because I don't want to have sex I'm a girl?” Liam almost wants to laugh as he buttons his shirt back up, shaking his head.

"What boy wouldn't want to sleep with the hottest cheerleader in school? I know you're not the brightest lightbulb in the bunch but this is basic biology."  
  
Liam almost tells her that she wishes she was the hottest cheerleader in school. Almost.  
  
Instead of insulting her any further, he dials down his already calm tone, standing up and taking her hands into his.  
  
"Sofa, I don't want to just sleep with you just because I can. I want it to be... special. I'm just not ready yet. That's all."  
  
The hard look in her eye never leaves. She yanks her hands out of Liam's.  
  
"I think you should leave." She says coolly, looking at the ground.  
  
"Seriously? How do you go from wanting to have sex to wanting me to leave?” Liam says, besides himself. She only looks away. Liam shakes his head, picking up his jacket and backing away. At the door, he looks back at her  
  
"Should I call you later or... "  
  
Sophia of course doesn't say anything. Liam raises his eyebrows, not pushing any further. Honestly, he's relieved.  
  
"Alright then..."  
  
On his way down the stairs, there's a knock at the front door. Liam stops and looks back up the stairs. It doesn't seem like Sophia is gonna come down to answer it so, he just does. How else was he gonna leave?  
  
When he opens the door, a breeze whooshes in, carrying roses and expensive perfume with something nostalgic, a familiar scent Liam knows is usually followed by none other than Zayn, who turns around when he hears the door open behind him.  
  
"Zayn?" Liam smiles. Seeing Zayn right now was like a breath of fresh air. Seeing Zayn _anytime_ was a breath of fresh air honestly.

 

“What're you--"  
  
"Lima Bean!" Zayn gleefully beams "I thought you'd be here."  
  
Zayn looks into his phone camera briefly, brushing back his wavy dark hair before looking back to a surprised Liam. Although he isn't sure why Zayn is here, he's really glad he is. He wipes his black Nikes off thoroughly on the mat outside before walking in. He hated having dirty shoes. He was one of those sticklers about his looks. Always clean and carefully put together.  
  
"Are you ready to go?" Zayn asks him, expectantly. Liam blinks.  
  
"Go where?" He doesn't even know why he asks. Right now, he'd go anywhere Zayn asked him too.  
  
"The party. Didn't Niall tell you High Tide was gonna be there?"  
  
There's a short moment of the gears turning in Liam's head, trying to figure out what the hell Zayn is talking about, clicking when he remembers Niall inviting him to his party, vaguely telling him a band was gonna come. He didn't tell him it was THAT band that was gonna be there.  
  
He and Zayn have been obsessed with High Tide since last year. They were this indie trio from London they’d discovered on tumblr. They weren’t huge but, they were doing pretty well to be from the city, and currently prepping to do a U.K. tour next year. A small tour but… still a tour. If he’d known they were here, he would've went to the party for sure.  
  
"No way! Are you serious?!" Liam freaks, making Zayn laugh and loop his arm through Liam's  
  
" _Dead_ serious. Come on, before we miss 'em." Zayn pauses before they leave, making a funny face at Liam.

 

“What?”

 

“Where the hell are your glasses?”

 

Liam almost forgot about them, only just realizing that he can't see anything clearly. He reaches into his pocket and pulls them out.

 

“Sofa thinks I look better without them.”

 

Zayn smacks his lips, taking the glasses and cleaning them briefly.

 

“I told you, don’t let miss 30 dictate what you look like. ”

 

Zayn sometimes called Sophia “miss 30” because he swears that's how old she is. It's easier for him to remember that. He used to call he Stephanie… or Stacey. Even Steven. Anything that started with a S from forgetting her name so much. Miss 30 was a small step up. Or step back depending on who you ask.

 

He finally gets Liam's glasses all cleaned off.

 

“I think you look better when you're not blind.” Zayn says as he adjusts them back onto their rightful place then fixes Liam’s spiked straight hair, brushing his fingers through it towards the top as he quiffs it perfectly for Liam. His hair was naturally curly but he straightened it everyday.

 

Liam watches Zayn as he fixes him up, smiling giddily. When his vision clears again, Liam is met with the flawless oil on a canvas that was Zayn Malik with his cool leather jacket and his sagging black jeans. The wavy slicked back hair that came to the nape of his neck, the warm golden brown eyes, the rebellious nose ring and multiple hoops up his ears, the wrinkles at the bridge of his nose in his smile… even the little eye freckle. It all came together like letters joining to construct words, strung together to create beautiful poetry. Zayn was so beautiful, it almost wanted to break your heart, just like a poem. And Zayn most definitely knows it.

 

“Besides, I like it better when you can see my face.” He adds with a cheeky wink. Liam laughs with warm cheeks, pushing Zayn's hands away.

 

“Your vanity _disgusts_ me,”

 

Zayn pinches his pink tinted cheek lightly

 

“My vanity makes you _blush_ , bean.”

 

Liam feels his belly flutter suddenly, struck by Zayn's words, even though he knows he's only joking. He has no idea how true that would still be if they used the word Liam actually meant, swapping _vanity_ with _beauty._

 

He can't even muster up any words to say, instead looking down at Zayn's wrist, the little sun sitting there, like a shameless little nod to Liam. He automatically traces over it, just because, but the moment is short lived.  
  
Sophia is coming downstairs.  
  
"What's this?" She asks, crossing her arms over her chest, eyeing Zayn like he broke into her house. Liam immediately lets go of Zayn's wrist, feeling like a child being scolded for doing something wrong. Zayn gives her a pretty white smile in spite of her obvious apprehension with his uninvited entry.  
  
"What is _he_ doing here?"  
  
"We're going out." Liam explains but Sophia doesn't seem to like that.  
  
"You're leaving?"  
  
Liam looks at Zayn for a second, thinking he can't be hearing correctly.

  
"Uh, didn't you just kick me out?"  
  
"Well I didn't know you were gonna go out!"

 

Liam squints.

 

“What kind of logic is that?”

 

“Don't get smart with me, _you're_ the one that's not making any sense.”  
  
Zayn snakes his arm around Liam's waist, resting his chin on his shoulder before Liam can respond.  
  
"It looks like we're lacking a bit of communication here." He tuts, fluttering his long eyelashes at her. It tickles Liam's cheek.  
  
"Here's what's happening," Zayn enunciates slowly, like he's talking to an idiot.  
  
"Lima and I are going to an invite only _soirée_ filled with booze, loud music and sexy men in an indie rock band we're huge fans of. Afterwards, we're hotboxing in my car, hopefully after I've sucked off the lead singer and future father to my adopted babies, then howling at the full moon and singing kumbaya together. Now did that make sense to you Steph?"  
  
He bats his eyes at her, straightening his mouth into a flat line, just dripping in sarcasm. Liam bites back a smile of his own. Sophia only glares at him. Obviously she didn't understand Zayn's humour.

 

“Baby, he's only joking with you. It’s just Niall’s party for winning the game but he said everyone can come.” Liam explains to her. Zayn glowers at Liam, like he wasn’t supposed to say that.

 

She resigns, grabbing her jacket and sliding on her shoes.  
  
"What are you doing?" Zayn asks her before Liam can.  
  
"You said everyone’s invited so I'm coming too. I'm not gonna let you keep kidnapping my boyfriend." She says simply, then flashes a sweet smile of her own at Zayn.  
  
"Now we can all sing kumbaya together, yeah?"  
  
Zayn sneers, rolling his eyes as he walked away, dragging Liam along with him.  
  
“I think you mean _our_ boyfriend." He mumbles as they leave “we're polyamorous… right Li?” he asks, squeezing Liam's shoulder. Liam only laughs, shaking his head. Yeah no, Sophia didn't like his conveniently peculiar sense of humour.

 

Zayn opens the front door for Liam, glancing back at Sophia trying to find her key to lock the door, then looks at Liam sharply.

“ _Why’d you fucking tell her where we were going?”_ he hisses at Liam, shoving him a little against his car before he can sit. Liam frowns, shoving him back.

 

“Why’s it matter?” He says, looking at her locking her front door then back at Zayn, shrugging and sitting in the car.

 

Zayn shakes his head, slamming the door shut in his face. As soon as Sophia sits in the back alone, Zayn floors it, sending the car flying down the street like a bat out of hell. He drives like a maniac when he’s pissed off.

 

It honestly goes without saying that Sophia and Zayn did not like each other at all, only putting up with the other for the sake of Liam. They were kind of sharing him. Zayn still wasn’t used to her.

 

Sophia used the cheer squad to get close to Liam until one day, out of nowhere, they're flirting during practice and walking around holding hands.

 

In all his 17 years of knowing him like the back of his hand, Zayn had never known Liam to have a girlfriend. He's lived through plenty of the melodramas that were Zayn's “guy friends” but, never has the table been turned like this, with Zayn being the single one and Liam bringing his girlfriend along everywhere suddenly. Well, she more like invited _herself_ everywhere and it was annoying as hell to Zayn. It literally came out of nowhere. Zayn wasn’t even sure if Liam was even straight or not until Sophia to be honest.

 

Growing up, Liam didn't obsess over sex or show any interest in girls, or boys for that matter, like most kids their age… ever. In fact, he _hated_ talking about sex.

 

Despite being around the infamous Zayn Malik all the time, Liam isn’t popular amongst their peers at all but he still has one thing going for him that no other boy in their school had, and that was his virtue. Everyone and their _mother_ knew he was a virgin and that was enough to have quite a bit of girls drool over him. Liam never seemed to notice.

 

Zayn doesn't understand the heterosexual female’s obsession with innocent virgin boys. It was like the idea of taking a their v-card gave them some kind of kink fuelled boner. He can clearly see that’s all Liam is to Sophia with her always pressuring him to have sex.

 

He thought him and straight girls would get along great, sharing a common interest but… he was wrong.

 

Leading a squad of them for the last 3 years for cheerleading taught Zayn stuff about girls he would've never known before. Don't get him wrong, he had a lot of respect for women even if he wasn't attracted to them. He grew up in a house full of them, and most of his friends were in fact girls. But he had absolutely no love for Sophia Smith. Something was just _wrong_ about her. Even when she moved here last year, he thought something was off. No one moves to Manningtree ever. People move out but no one ever comes.

 

Aside from her weird kink with Liam’s virginity, Zayn was inclined to believe there was way more to her than what she appeared. She had a fake ID that said she was 23 year old Sophia Miller. Zayn wasn’t so sure it was fake. Why be so specific? His friend Harry told him he was just being paranoid but he was pretty convinced that she was lying about something.  

 

So, when Sophia showed up last year and wiggled her tits in Liam's face, she stole him away from Zayn.

 

Sophia couldn't stand Zayn because, aside from the fact that he never called her by her actual name, he really enjoyed dangling Liam in her face. She resented the fact that Liam seemed to always do whatever Zayn told him too. She knew how close they were coming into this relationship but she never knew how much it bothered her until she found out Zayn was gay. Every touch, look, and even memory they shared irked her to the core after that.  

 

So what happens when you put a homophobe and heterophobe in a plastic bottle with a cute boy and shake it up? An ugly, messy, ongoing war ensues. That's what this little threesome was. Liam didn't really notice cause he never notices anything. Or if he did, he was too nice to openly acknowledge the tension. Maybe he was even hoping they’d learn to love each other the same as he loved them. By god was he wrong.

 

*

 

You know how some people claim that the party doesn't start until they walk in? Well, for Zayn, the party actually didn't start until he walked in. When he strolls through those doors, arm linked with Liam's, the music sounds a little more crisp. The people's feet dancing feels more in synch, and the atmosphere just tastes sweeter. You could just feel his presence no matter what. Zayn could turn a sour old lemon into sweet honey dew by just being there.

 

As soon as they walk in, seemingly everyone greets Zayn. Liam is suddenly reminded of how popular he is again. It's not a huge party like how Niall said it’s be. There's maybe 25 or something people and it's the type of crowd that _do not_ welcome people like Liam. The intimacy makes him a little uncomfortable. There was no space he could escape into. He can feel eyes boring holes into them and his heart rate kicks up a bit as nervousness starts to settle. He should've stayed home. He has to go home. He has to go _anywhere_ but here.

 

“Hey,” Zayn squeezes Liam's waist before he starts dissociating.

 

“Look at me.”

 

Liam looks at Zayn next to him, two inches away from his face as he rests his chin on Liam's shoulder, giving Liam his full attention despite a few people calling for him to come over. Liam suddenly doesn't want to be anywhere but here.

 

_“What's your favourite colour?”_

 

Liam laughs. That was Zayn’s question. The question that anchors Liam’s mind from going away.

 

 _“Pink_.” he sighs. All the nervousness is washed away then, feeling calm as he looked at Zayn. It makes him stop thinking about where they are momentarily, which is what Liam thinks the point was in him asking him that. A distraction. Zayn smiles.

 

“There you go. If you feel overwhelmed, just think about blending into your favourite colour and you’ll feel calm, yeah?”

 

Liam nods.

 

“Okay.”

 

Zayn pecks his cheek then like he always does.

 

“Zayn!” His friend Jade calls for him again. He looks away from Liam, taking all the calmness away with his attention.

 

“Come smoke this with us?”

 

Her girlfriend Perrie comes up behind her, waving the joint mischievously in front of her nose.

 

Zayn holds his heart as his face crumbles like he's getting emotional over them offering to do drugs with him.

 

“Pezza et mon Chéri, _my darlings_.” he sighs dramatically, hanging off Liam’s waist until he drags off of him and over to his favourite girlfriends.

 

“Always speaking my language.”

 

They laugh as he kisses them both on the lips and links their arms together.

 

“Oi, Malik.” Louis calls him from across the room. Zayn looks up, nodding as Louis tilts his head for him to follow as he walks away with a few of their other friends. Liam supposes they’re considered the “cool kids” cause they do drugs and wear leather jackets and act all superior and hate everyone else. All the mere mortals like Liam are afraid of them. He wishes Zayn wasn’t one of _them._

 

As they begin to walk away, Jade stops them for a moment, glancing back at Liam like she actually sees him standing there, unlike everyone else.

 

“Wait,” she looks at Zayn “Lima can share too if he wants.”

 

She was the only person other than Zayn who called Liam that as a term of endearment, which Liam really liked. He always liked Jade despite her technically being one of the populars. Even in nursery school, she was always so kind to him. He kind of always thought she didn’t really belong in that group either but she was Perrie’s girlfriend so she kind of fell into it.

 

Zayn hesitates as he looks at Liam.

 

“Oh, uh-”

 

“Louis, Cher and Anthony are smoking too. I haven't got enough for _everyone_.” Perrie complains, scowling at Liam as she looks back at him like he's burdening her despite him not saying anything.

 

Zayn shakes his head quickly.

 

“He doesn't do drugs.” he explains. Jade smiles but Perrie rolls her eyes.

 

“ _Of course_ he doesn't.” They say simultaneously, Jade in understanding, Perrie in condescence.

 

Liam's never felt so ashamed of his own virtue before as his face burns with embarrassment. He was on meds for his disorder so he couldn’t do mind altering substances. And he doesn’t know what that might bring out of him, even if he wasn’t taking medication already. His disassociation sort of did it’s own thing. Only one other person knows about that though so to everyone else, it just looks like he’s a loser.

 

This always happens. No matter what, whenever he steps out of his comfort zone and hangs out with a large group of people, everyone is reminded of how lame he is and it brings down the whole vibe, making it awkward now and he’s manage to do it just by walking into this party. Even Zayn looks embarrassed of it. He clearly doesn’t want Liam to come either.

 

“Come on.” Perrie urges, ushering him away before Liam can even say one word at all. Jade waves at him as they go.

 

Zayn looks back with a pinched, apologetic expression, promising Liam he'll be right back before vanishing into the house. Liam is then totally alone. Well, not totally. Sophia finally comes inside and wraps her arms around him from behind.

 

“Are we rid of him? Thank _God.”_ she groans, leaning into his neck, as if she hadn't just cursed Liam out and almost thrown him out of her house not even 30 minutes ago.

 

“There's not a lot of people here. We can finally get some alone time.”

 

Liam frowns a little because she's still not getting it. When he said he's not ready to have sex, he didn't mean they should just change locations. He meant _he's not ready to have sex_. Before he can calmly explain this to her, he's greeted by his closest friend Harry, who is shocked to see Liam here since Liam told him he wasn’t coming.

 

“Liam Payne! What the fuck are you doing here?” Harry emerges from the party, grinning with his arms opened wide. Harry was a hugger, which worked great for their friendship because so was Liam.

 

“Z told me to come find you, I can't believe you actually _came,”_

 

“Haz,” Liam smiles as a massive feeling of relief washes over him from seeing an actual friend here, going in for the embrace.

 

Harry smells like pure _peyote_ and it stinks bad. Liam tuts disapprovingly but Harry swears it's “organic shit” because he grows it out of the ground. He uses it for everything. In his food, to wash his curly hair, smoking it…

 

Harry was kind of a hippie. Liam and Zayn both think he was actually meant to be born in the 60s cause of his taste in music (His favourite bands being Tame Impala & Thundercat) and his big curly mop top he usually ties big headbands around and the way he seemed high almost 24/7 cause of his morbid tone of voice, even if he wasn’t high. They were convinced something went wrong so he got dropped him off with the millennials by mistake instead of in the era of Woodstock.

 

“Opium poppy comes from the ground too you know.” Liam laughs. Harry tilts his head.

 

“What's that for?”

 

_“Heroin.”_

 

They both burst out laughing then until Sophia loudly clears her throat behind them. She raises her eyebrows at Liam expectantly.

 

Harry nods to Sophia but she only rolls her eyes and walks away when Liam doesn't change his mind. He raises his eyebrows at Liam, who dismisses it.

 

“She’s kinda upset with me.”

 

“Cleary,” Harry snorts,

 

“What is it this time?”

 

They sit on a sofa nearby so Liam can recount the last hour of marital strife to Harry who becomes very upset upon hearing the whole thing.

 

“Liam… you can't put up with that. That's very abusive behaviour.”

 

Liam laughs, shaking his head.

 

"What? Being called a girl? This isn't Disney channel. Trust me, I've been called worse things."  
  
"No, I'm talking about her pressuring you, and don't even get me started on the verbal abuse. You can't just let her berate you just because she's your girlfriend." Harry says, seriously but Liam disregards his concern with a dismissive flip of the hand. Harry’s never even had a real girlfriend. What does he know?  
  
"What did Zayn say?"  
  
“He didn't come until after. What does this have to do with him anyways?"  
  
Harry picks up Liam's wrist, wiggling it in his face. It seemed like everyone loved throwing his tattoo in his face today.  
  
"I think the person that put this on your wrist when you were fucking 12 would be very interested in hearing what you've just told me as he _always_ is when anyone talks to you like that."  
  
Liam takes his wrist away, rubbing over the tattoo as he shakes his head.  
  
"Harry, you know he’s not exactly _in love_ with her. He freaks if she even raises her voice at me around him."  
  
Harry taps his chin, exaggeratedly pretending to think.  
  
"Hm. I wonder why that is..."  
  
Liam rolls his eyes.  
  
"You wouldn't understand."  
  
"Understand what? That when one of you starts dating someone you automatically hate that person because you haven't realised that you're in love with each other? You're right, I wouldn't understand that as I haven't met my soulmate yet."  
  
"Harry!" Liam laughs, throwing his head back.  
  
"You can roll your eyes to the back of your head, love. You can't change the truth."  
  
Liam can't even bother to say anything back anymore. Harry has been saying this since the day they got the tattoos. He was always a very superstitious alien child. He wholeheartedly believed that by Zayn and Liam impulsively inking each others skin one day in his attic when he showed them his brothers old tattoo gun, they were forever bound to each other. Liam thinks he needs to just lay off the hallucinogens.

 

They weren't extravagant. Just a minimalist little crescent moon Zayn drew on Liam's wrist and a full sun-star in the same design on his own. But Liam thinks that's bullshit because Harry let’s Zayn tattoo him all the time and they have way more matching tattoos than what should be considered normal. He only ever got the one but Harry and Zayn were covered in them, random inks all over their arms and chests. Zayn usually regrets a lot of them so he always wears long sleeves shirts and jackets.

 

“Hey Liam!” Niall smiles as he walks by with Tom in tow behind him. They wave at Harry too.

 

“You made it!”

 

“Yeah… um… thanks for, uh, inviting me.” Liam says awkwardly.

 

Niall nods with a wide grin.

 

“No problem. Anything for Zayn.” he laughs. Liam's brows knit together as he frowns a little.

 

“What?”

 

“Ni, come on!” Tom pulls him away towards the kitchen. Niall goes on, glancing back at them.

 

“Cheers mate!” he chirps. Harry waves.

 

“Such a nice guy.” Harry sighs. “He even invited every school in town. You know, all 3 of them.”

 

“What did he mean by _anything for Zayn_ ?” Liam asks, confused. Harry shrugs.  
  
"Where is your lover boy anyways?" He asks, just as Liam was beginning to wonder the same thing. As he looks around, he didn't see him anywhere. In fact, there seems to be at least 3 times as many people here now as there was before. Like made every school in town _did_ show up.  
  
"He went to get high with his total dickward friends.” Liam says begrudgedly but, that was almost a half hour ago now and Zayn said he'd be right back.  
  
Harry stands up when a couple making out on the couch start getting a little too close for comfort.  
  
"Let's go somewhere less... orgy-like." He tells Liam, who agrees that there's way too many people here now than he'd like to be around.  
  
They leave the foyer, happening upon another cramped room filled with smoke and haze with only about half a dozen people sitting around a table. The table has lots of red cups filled with what is probably alcohol and drugs while a few others stand around, laughing and talking while the table plays some kind of card game. Liam wasn't one for party games -or parties at all- but he still stops when he sees Zayn sitting at the table too. Everyone in the room is baked.  
  
Perrie takes a hit from a joint then picks up a card and puts it on her lips before she drapes her arm over her girlfriend and passes it Jade next to her, who takes it, on the mouth by suction so it almost looks like they're kissing. They pass the card around like that until someone drops it and they actually do kiss without the card separating their lips. After they kiss, they blow out smoke transferred to them.  
  
"Suck and blow." Harry tells Liam who nods. He's watched people play this before. A classic kissing/smoking game. Shotgunning wasn't usually involved normally but Manningtree had its own unique way of doing things. Like the high school version of spin the bottle. Of course Zayn was playing. He loved smoking weed. And he loved kissing even more. Even if it was a girl.  
  
They just watch for a moment in the back until Zayn gets the card passed to him by none other than Louis Tomlinson, his on-again, off-again ex-boyfriend that he broke up with a few months ago. Even though they're not really kissing, it still looks like they are and it makes Liam's skin crawl.

 

He couldn't stand Louis, and not because he was jealous like Harry says or the fact that he’s bullied Liam since they were children. It was because in the 3 years him and Zayn had been breaking up and getting back together over and over, he was cheating on Zayn, constantly. But Zayn would always act like he didn't care and keep going back as if nothing happened. Louis was a sleaze and Zayn deserved way better than him. Of course Liam didn't like him.  
  
Right after Zayn passes the card, he looks over at Liam and Harry, almost like he can sense them standing at the door. He lights up, loudly ordering them to come and join the table with inflated delight. Suddenly, all eyes are on them. Liam doesn't like being center of attention like this so he sits next to Zayn, where all the attention will be dwarfed to him instead.

 

“Why can _he_ play and not me?” Stan complains from against the wall.

 

“Cause he isn't an knobby sack of shit nor does he have _herpes_ of the mouth.” Zayn says sweetly at Liam, making everyone laugh at Stan. Including Liam. It's always nice seeing him get a taste of his own medicine. He may be big and bad with Liam but Zayn was very much the Regina George of their school and no one dared to mess with Liam with Zayn nearby.

 

Stan tiffs, giving Liam the finger behind Zayn's back.

 

Zayn scoots over in his seat and gets Liam to sit there next to him instead of in another seat even though this tiny chair can barely even fit one person. But Zayn is really high right now so Liam's not expecting a ton of rational behaviour from him.

 

He was already a provocative person as it is naturally but he usually knew when not to hit the ceiling. When he was high, there _was_ no ceiling. His provocative nature became unrestrained.

 

“Do you even know how to play, Urkel? This game involves _shotgunning and slow tongue kissing_.” Louis smirks, referring to Liam as that nerdy TV show character that wore the thick glasses. Everyone laughs.

 

Liam nervously adjusts his glasses, feeling his stomach twist. Zayn hits Louis upside the head with the hand resting across Louis’ shoulders

 

“Of course he knows how to play idiot.” He smiles politely. Louis elbows Zayn's arm off of him, grimacing.

 

“Somebody's in a _mood_.” Zayn rolls his eyes, taking his arm off Louis to lean both arms on top of the table as he slouches with his terrible posture.

 

Liam could guess why he's in a "mood". Louis didn’t like Liam anymore than Liam liked him. He bullied him for years until him and Zayn started going out. After that he just barely tolerated Liam.

 

“Don't worry for Louis. It's not you. He's just mad I didn't let him sit next to Pezza.” Zayn says to Liam, louder than necessary.

 

That was an odd thing to say. Everyone at the table looks at them.

 

“ _Zayn_.” Perrie hisses through clenched teeth, her face telling him to knock it off.

 

“What? I'm not airing any dirty laundry am I?”

 

Perrie glares at him.

 

“You mean like you and Tyler under the bleachers at the game today?” She mimes a blowjob, poking the inside of her cheek with her tongue while moving her hand back and forth.

 

Liam blushes at the obscene gesture while everyone else laughs. Next to her, their Italian friend Anthony shoves a card onto her mouth so she'll stop.

 

“No one needs to see a lesbian pretending to blow someone.” He sighs as Jade passes the joint to Liam, who shakes his head quickly so she'll pass it to Harry on her other side instead.

 

Zayn shrugs nonchalantly.

 

“What, you guys want details?” he asks the whole room.

 

“Over half of the people sitting at this table are fucking queers and none of us want to hear about you sucking off Tyler Quinn.” Anthony informs him, looking around to actually count.

 

“We’ve got Cher and Louis, your local bisexuals… the two dykes in the corner,” He gestures to Perrie and Jade.

 

“Yours truly, the _ace.”_ he smiles, lightly touching his own chest.

 

“The _straights.”_ He scoffs towards Harry and Liam with a roll of the eye. Liam blushes at being pointed out as the odd one.

 

“I actually prefer the term _metrosexual_ Tony, thanks.” Harry cuts him off with a wink.

 

 _“And your #1 cocksucker_.” Zayn gleefully chirps with a cheesy grin. “Now shut up Tony. It’s Z’s storytime.”

 

Everyone groans when Zayn goes on anyways, bumping shoulders with Liam as he talks. Liam bumps him right back playfully. It’s his way of letting Liam know he hasn’t forgot he's there.

 

“Thanks a lot Perrie.” Louis throws a card at her, as well as several others for encouraging Zayn to tell in _explicit_ detail about what he and Tyler did under the bleachers. He's always got some pretty interesting hook-up stories but most of them are exaggerated anyways.

 

Jade covers Liam's ears to preserve his innocence, making him laugh as he listens to Zayn's muffled voice while he leans against Liam, watching him talk animatedly.

 

It was always their unconscious way of reminding each other they're together without directly interacting, touching each other some kind of way to let the other know they're right there.

 

Liam actually feels like he’s a part of their group right now rather than disconnected like he normally does. They go back and forth, bumping each other’s shoulder while Zayn yammers off with no filter, as always.

 

“... after that he busted in like 10 seconds and his nut tasted like fucking _battery acid._ I spit that shit out in his _face_ , I was so disgusted. I told him if he ever sees me around again anywhere, he’d better walk the other fucking way. If someone doesn't eat fruit or at least drink water… I'm not swallowing. I'd rather  _die._ _”_ Zayn finishes.

 

“Jesus fucking _Christ_ …” Harry laughs. Perrie shakes her head in disgust.

 

“That’s _sick_.”

 

“Dick _is_ sick Pez. Nature’s gift to humanity. You should know pretty well yourself.” Zayn winks.

 

Okay that one seemed like a genuine dig. Liam can't tell if he's really shading her or if they're joking…

 

“If you like it so much then you can suck _mine_.” She says sharply with a fake smile.

 

“I heard erectile dysfunction is common among lesbos and I’ve had enough experience with that myself so maybe not, yeah?” He easily replies, smiling like they’re having a real conversation and not insulting each other under the guise of friendliness. He's also insulting Louis here too now.

 

“Zayn…” Louis pinches the bridge of his nose in annoyance.

 

“Please… shut the _fuck_ up!”

 

Zayn giggles, flicking Louis’ ear.

 

“No _you_ shut up.” he retorts childishly.

 

“Why don't the three of you get a fucking room so you can _all_ shut the fuck up.” Cher complains. Liam agrees, with the shutting up part that is.

 

There was a rumor going around that Perrie cheated on Jade with someone a few months ago but she and Jade were still together, 10 years strong so Liam figured it wasn't true. But the way Zayn was picking with her now… he was starting to wonder if it really _was_ true.

 

Zayn leans off Liam, over to Louis’ side, hanging onto his shoulder to press his mouth to the side of Louis’ ear as he whispers something to him. They both start laughing right after. It only ticks Perrie off even more.

 

Next to him, Jade is the only one being quiet in her corner, her expression sullen and distant now. Or she might just be out of it because she's high too. Liam would just feel really bad if Zayn really was intentionally airing out their dirty laundry, high or not.

 

Louis and Zayn continue to snicker with each other as the rest of the table moves on from the awkward moment.

 

 _Whatever_ they're doing, Liam just wishes they'd stop. It really wasn't anyone's business but Jade and Perrie if they were having problems with their relationship and if Zayn was making fun if that right now… then he really did need to shut up. Even if Liam didn't like Perrie. He really liked Jade and she was way too sweet to be stuck in the middle of this.

 

Liam bumps Zayn again a little more purposefully before he can make anymore inebriated remarks.

 

“ _Hey_ ,”

 

Zayn looks at him with his glossy, bloodshot eyes, raising his eyebrows while the rest of the table continue to talk.

 

“‘m sorry, am I acting up?” He asks quietly, frowning when he sees Liam's expression. Liam shakes his head.

 

“You're alright… just be _mindful_ of what you're saying.” Liam says gently. Zayn blinks, his eyes flirting over Liam's face as he nods like a bobble head, trying to look serious. His eyes are too unfocused and he can't stop nodding though cause he’s so goddamn high. It makes Liam laugh. Zayn laughs too.  
  
"I thought this would be interesting." Harry sighs from where he's sitting across from them, in between Perrie and Jade. Liam looks away from Zayn, not even realizing the game had restarted.

 

He anxiously watches the card get passed around, beginning to regret sitting here. He didn't want to have smoke exhaled into his lungs and he definitely didn't want to kiss anyone, mostly because he's been told on several occasions that he's not very good at kissing by Sophia.

Zayn discreetly leans into Liam's ear then.  
  
"You _do_ know how to play this, right?" He asks very quietly so only Liam hears it this time as not to embarrass him in front of everyone. Liam nods, making a face at Zayn.  
  
"I'm not totally innocent y'know." He tells him casually. Louis side eyes Liam, quirking his mouth to the side a bit, like Liam’s the annoying child trying to fit in with the big kids.

 

Liam knows the way they play. If you want to kiss someone, you blow the card before passing it and shotgun the smoke. If you want _someone else_ to kiss you, you distract them so their breathing doesn't hold still enough to hold the card. If the card falls on it's own, you _have_ to kiss them.

 

Zayn looks him up and down.  
  
“Well I haven't spent the last 17 years of your life trying to ruin your innocence for nothing have I?" He retorts all sly, wiggling his eyebrows cheekily, making Liam laugh again. God, he was so ridiculous when he's like this. And in general.  
  
The card almost makes it to Louis but, Cher accidentally drops it, making out with him instead and Liam breathes out a sigh of relief now that the rotation reverses so his turn is prolonged. Zayn groans loudly.  
  
"Damn it Cher." He complains, then looks at Liam  
  
"Now I won't be able to _kiss_ you."  
  
Everyone laughs, including Liam, feeling his cheeks warm up again, thankful that the low lighting and haze will conceal his blush. He knows Zayn is joking but, it still makes his tummy flutter.  
  
He watches the rotation finally catch up to him as Harry successfully passes the card to Jade who passes it to Liam without it dropping. You would think that sucking a card to your mouth would be easy but, under pressure, it's really hard for Liam to concentrate.

 

Thinking about how many people he's indirectly kissing on this card is kind of grossing him out. The way Zayn is smirking at him isn't helping with his focus either.  
  
He quickly pushes the card onto Zayn's mouth, only almost dropping it when Zayn's hand lightly touches his thigh under the table, making goose bumps spread all over his skin. But he doesn't drop it. Zayn is moving so languidly right now though, it takes a beat for him to take the card off Liam's mouth.  
  
When Zayn gives it to Louis, he visibly blows on the card instead of sucking, purposefully making it drop so he and Louis kiss.

 

The smoke Louis shotguns into Zayn trickles out of his nose in a flume of a cloud around them so he won't have to pull away to exhale.  
  
Everyone cheers them on as they go all out sucking face, except for Liam who has war flashbacks to when they'd be pressing each other into lockers in the hallways at school, slobbing each other down.

 

Zayn loved kissing more than anything. He once said that slow tongue kissing was his kink.

 

 _‘Whether it's on your mouth or your dick, I'm not too particular._ ’ That was his thing.

 

He always said he could do either for hours and never get bored and he wasn't exaggerating that one. It was part of the reason he was rarely ever single. He was the type of person that would openly blow someone under the bleachers or even your _boyfriend_ right in your face and not care what anyone had to say about it. When him and Louis would break up, he’d be onto the next guy almost immediately. Then back to Louis. From the looks of it, they’re rekindling wherever they left off from.

 

Liam looks away as they kiss, focusing instead on the table... and also Zayn's hand still resting on his leg, still reminding Liam that he's there.  
  
After what feels like a million fucking years, Zayn and Louis finally stop making out. They grin at each other for a moment before Zayn wipes Louis’ mouth and his own then he turns to Liam, who forgot the rotation has to reverse now. Zayn puts the card securely on his mouth without taking a hit and nods his head up, meaning for Liam to lean in instead. So he does. Right before he can catch it, the card falls away and the next thing you know, Liam's lips are on Zayn's.

 

[Tame Impala - Yes I’m Changing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uts-_rsxPM)

 

Somehow, he just _knew_ Zayn was gonna do that because he didn’t intend on shotgunning with Liam knowing he doesn't do drugs but Liam’s still surprised for some reason when they make contact. Zayn's free hand touches Liam's wrist, fingertips grazing the inside where his tattoo was while the other stays resting still on his leg.  
  
He’s never kissed Zayn like this before. His lips were so soft. Like really expensive silk, which is perfect because that's basically what Zayn is. Also as expected, he is a really freaking good kisser. Just like him, his lips moved very relaxed, almost like he isn't putting in real effort in the way he makes Liam's lips melt against his as he pushes up against Liam’s slow and steadily.

 

He runs the tip of his tongue _ever so slightly_ along Liam's bottom lip, gently coaxing his mouth open. When Liam's lips part, Zayn's tongue slips into his mouth this time, slowly massaging over Liam's and _wow_ . He was not expecting Zayn to really kiss him. Well, he was but, not like this. All consuming and drown-out and... _french_.

 

Liam just goes with it, moving his tongue on Zayn's as well, finding his head tilting to the side as he does so, pulling back the more Zayn leans into it, deepening the kiss and making his cologne wraps around Liam deliciously until Liam is sure he'll be carrying the flavours around with him for a very long time. He thinks he hears some cheering and laughter but his brain’s senses are being flooded with too much happening at once to register anything outside of Zayn.

 

Zayn tastes of sweet, sugary rose water and the sensation is overwhelming Liam's body. All he can think about is blushing and _his lips_ and soft petals turning to absolute _mush_ as he kisses Zayn. It's like being kissed by an actual flower. It feels so familiar yet, still totally new and enthralling.

 

He loses himself in it, his hand just instinctively going straight in Zayn's shaggy hair, needing to hold onto something, which Zayn obviously likes because the next thing Liam knows, Zayn's hand is moving further up his thigh and Liam's gasping into his mouth and pulling away as he grabs Zayn’s hand away before he can go any further.  
  
It takes a moment for him to blink his eyes open, momentarily forgetting that they're at a table full of people, as well as quite a few more bystanders that have wandered into the room, making the space just as cramped as outside.

 

 _Everyone_ is staring at them. Honestly, he doesn't even notice anyone else because that was the most reverting thing he ever did since getting a tattoo. Zayn seems to be waking up from it too, eyelashes fluttering as he blinks his glossy red eyes a few times.  
  
"Okay... I think they win." Anthony laughs. What actually shocks Liam more than anything else in that moment is that he thinks Zayn is actually... blushing.

 

It’s a faint but oh so lovely shade of soft pink and it's so unexpected because he never got embarrassed of anything. Like maybe sometimes Zayn's own level of shameless antics surprised even himself. He looks like he's about to say something but, it's cut off when Liam looks up, met with the angry, green eyes of his girlfriend.  
  
"Sofa" the name sounds foreign coming out of him.

 

The room falls deathly silent, everyone looking between Liam and the seething brunette standing at the threshold, waiting to see who's gonna make the next move.

 

Harry isn't even breathing for fear of cutting his throat with the wicked tension in the air. It's the most awkward situation he's ever experienced.  
  
"Sophia--"  
  
"Oh, God no." Sophia clutches her chest dramatically "Please, don't let me interrupt _whatever_ this is. I was just leaving." She quips with a false smile before turning away, back out the door. Liam tries to stand up, starting after her but Zayn holds the chair still, looking a bit rattled.  
  
" _Wait_ ," he says, holding Liam's panicked gaze for only a second.

 

 _Leave her_.

 

No one says it. But the look possibly does. Liam looks at Zayn then his eyes flick past Zayn at Louis behind him who's on his phone, not even paying attention. Liam looks back to Zayn. Then Liam does something Harry has never seen him do in his entire life. He chooses someone else instead of Zayn.

 

He shakes his head at Zayn in annoyance. Their chair pushes out anyways, despite Zayn, and Liam hastily leaves the room without a moment of hesitation or even a second glance, grimacing as he wipes off his mouth on the way out. Harry watches about 8 different emotions play across Zayn's face, ranging from confusion to maybe _hurt?_ Harry isn't quite sure. There's something else he can't distinguish fully.  
  
Liam stops Sophia in the hall. They're too far away to be heard over everyone in the room resuming their conversions but, you can see their silhouettes. Sophia is clearly upset and Liam is saying something fervently, explaining something as he doesn’t let her take another step.

  
Meanwhile, the game continues on with even more people, moving on from what just happened. Harry catches Zayn still watching them down the hall ever so often, watching as whatever Liam says seem to get through to Sophia, dropping her guarded walls and letting Liam wrap his arms around her.

 

He even continues to watch creepily as they start kissing, something dark flaring in his usually bright eyes that Harry realizes is jealousy. And maybe something even more dangerous... like _hate._ Zayn only looks away when he realizes Harry is watching him watch them. He's unusually quiet for the rest of time, until he excuses himself, suddenly not in the mood.  
  
Liam and Sophia rejoin the rest of the party, deciding that dancing was the best way to uncomplicate matters.

 

It took a lot of convincing but, Liam finally got her to realize that they were playing a game. He told her that Zayn was just being Zayn and it truly didn't mean anything because Liam obviously isn’t gay. Sophia likes hearing him say stuff like this.

 

He tells he'd do anything to make it up to her, which he really shouldn't have said because Sophia only wanted the one thing he wasn't willing to give away just yet, which was his virginity. But she refuses to accept anything but makeup sex so... it was looking some sacrifices were gonna be tonight afterall. If only they knew how true that really was.  
  
For now though, they dance. Very intimately at that. The soundtrack wasn't really the kind of that called for this type of dancing. Britney Spears’ “ _Toxic_ ” wasn't exactly baby making but, Sophia was so thirsty for his dick, she was determined to have her way and make it baby making music.  
  
She grinds into Liam with her back resting against his chest, reaching up behind her to tangle he fingers in his hair. Liam closes his eyes, putting his chin on top of her hair, sighing as they swayed.  
  
"I'm gonna make it so good for you baby." She says suddenly. Liam's eyebrow raise.  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"Your first time. You're gonna wonder why you ever waited so long."    
  
Liam nods silently, keeping his eyes closed. Sophia turns around then, sliding Liam's hands from her waist down to her ass.  
  
"You can put it wherever you want." Her voice dips lowly, not even sounding like herself. Liam nods quickly, feeling his pulse jump at the implication.  
  
"Okay." He exhales. She kisses the side of his jaw slowly until her lips graze against his ear.  
  
"... 'm gonna fuck the shit out of you Lima."  
  
Liam freezes. The music around them slows down completely, going from fast paced Britney to a more seductive, sensual beat with the same lyrics.

 

[Yaël Naïm - Toxic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqKZ_WIK5ms)

  
  
He opens his eyes, finding them to be met with warm golden one's with a little brown freckle on the side.  
  
"Z-"  
  
Zayn's finger goes over his lips, shushing him before sliding down to his neck, pulling him down to his lips, kissing him breathless. It's just like before, Liam losing himself in it, obviously having lost his grip with reality cause his brain is a dysfunctional piece of work but he doesn't even care, gripping handfuls of Zayn's ass instead.  
  
He pulls away, only for a second, blinking a few times. It looks so real. It’s never looked this real before.  
  
"I think I’m hallucinating." He utters, staring dumbly but Zayn only smiles, shaking his head.  
  
"Nobody's sleeping babe. The only way that's happening is if I'm under you." He says lowly, attaching his lips to Liam's throat, sucking lightly. Liam's eyes flutter closed again, soaking in the moment.  
  
"Or would you prefer me riding you?" He asks. "Do you want that baby?" Liam only shakes his head.  
  
"Do whatever you want." He sighs.

 

Zayn kisses him again, filthily. His hand slowly slides down Liam's chest, past his stomach, and below his waist only this time, Liam doesn't stop him. He lets his hand wander, all the way until its wrapping around Liam's dick and he gasps, holding onto the wall behind him.  
  
"Relax Lima," Zayn smiles as he begins expertly jerking Liam off with a relaxed flick of his tattooed wrist, stroking him slow at first and gradually picking up the pace. Liam practically falls against him, one arm holding Zayn's waist while the other keeps him upright against the wall.  
  
"I wanna make your knees weak," Zayn whispers. Liam wants to say he already has but, he only manages to let a moan escape.  
  
"You can do it, come on." Zayn voice coaxes softly. Liam squeezes his eyes shut, starting to thrust in Zayn's hand.  
  
"That's it baby,"  
  
Liam lets go of the wall holding both sides of Zayn's waist as he pumps steadily, Liam resting his head on his shoulder. He barely opens his eyes, making eye contact with Zayn's again only, instead them being right in front of him, they're across the room, staring back at him in a sea of endless people.  
  
"Fuck," Liam breathes, closing his eyes again and letting his head nod back.  Sharp teeth scrape against his exposed throat.  
  
"Cum for me," the words crawl around his neck, almost choking him as he does just that, knees buckling in a choked off groan as his orgasm takes his life.    
  
He opens his eyes again, breathing heavy and feeling slacked. The spot Zayn was standing across the way is now empty. In front of him, Sophia is wiping off her slicked up hand, smiling. Liam groans, the back of his head hitting the wall as he squeezes his eyes shut again.  
  
Sophia wraps her arms around him  
  
"Wow, who knew you had all that in you." She laughs, kissing the side of his mouth. Liam exhales deeply, nodding in agreement.  
  
"Yeah, who knew."  
  
He didn't even feel guilty about the fact that the only reason he came like that was because he was imagining it was Zayn. Sophia starts saying something about either staying here or going back to her place but, Liam zones out, noticing the lead singer of High Tide talking to someone with dark hair on the other side of the room.  
  
"Oh. My. God." Liam murmurs slowly. Sophia looks to where he's staring  
  
"What?"  
  
"That's Eggsy Miller!" He exclaims but, that doesn't mean anything to Sophia  
  
"The lead singer of High Tide?" He tries to explain further but, it still didn't ring any bells for her. Liam just rolls his eyes, resigning with “never mind”. He’s tried to put her onto them many, many times. He kinda got the feeling she was pretending like she didn't know who he was. He’s talked about them way too much for her to not know by now.

 

“I'll be right back.” he rushes, starting away.

 

“Are you gonna go… talk to Eggsy?”

 

Liam turns back around

 

“No. I have to find Zayn. He loves Eggsy, he's gonna flip!”

 

Sophia puts her hands on her hips, exasperated.

 

“Are you fucking kidding me? Why can't _you_ just talk to him? I'll even come with you!”

 

Liam sighs in annoyance. They were not about to do this again.

 

“The only reason I came here was so we could see them tonight _together_ so don't start giving me more crap when I already told you I'd do whatever you wanted after we leave.”

 

Sophia’s mouth snaps shut. She crosses her arms and nods compliantly without another word, to Liam’s surprised relief.

 

“Thank you.” he sighs before turning around to go look for Zayn. He doesn't end up going that far as he runs smack into him when he gets closer to Eggsy.

 

“Hey!” Liam smiles but Zayn doesn't return it, instead looking at him blank faced before continuing on to where he was going.

 

“Hi.” he says, monotone.

 

When he steps right past, Liam frowns, grabbing his hand.

 

“Wait, I was looking for you.”

 

Zayn looks back at him and shrugs, pulling his hand out of Liam's.  

 

“So you found me. What do you want?”

 

His tone and expression is so bleak, it throws Liam off. Zayn is usually hopping off the walls at parties. Right now, he was uncharacteristically charmless.

 

Liam looks behind him, seeing Eggsy and the rest of the band talking to each other. He looks back at Zayn then.

 

“Look, they're actually here!” he points behind him. Zayn looks back at them and his whole demeanor transforms, lighting up completely as he smiled at them.

 

“I know, I just talked to Eggsy. He asked me to get us drinks!” he says, waving excitedly at them.

 

“Fuck I want him to _destroy_ me…” Zayn mutters with a whiny face as he watches them. Liam frowns slightly.

 

“Drinks?” Liam repeats “Does he know how old you are?”

 

Zayn looks back at Liam with a grimace.

 

“Oh God Liam... please don't start that.” He tuts with an upturned nose “Don’t start the _daddy_ thing.”

 

“I'm not!”

 

“Yes you are! I'm not a child. He knows I’m 18. If Eggsy Miller wants me to get him a drink, then I’m gonna get Eggsy Miller a fucking drink. And if he wants me to suck his dick after, then even better!” He states, a little loud. Liam shushes him, looking back at the band close by.

 

“You’re only _17_ and I'm just saying they’re _adults_ , I'm not trying to tell you what to do. You should just be careful. And they probably heard everything you just said.” Liam quietly informs him. Zayn takes half a step back, looking Liam up and down then around them briefly, as if to say Liam can’t _possibly_ be talking to him.

 

“I’m sorry but… aren't you eating a 30 year old woman’s pussy every weekend and you wanna warn _me_ about fucking around with adults?” He says slowly. Liam shakes his head disapprovingly, not taking any offense at all to Zayn hurling harsh words at him right now.

“Why are you being like this? _They can hear you!”_ Liam says quietly.

 

“ _That's kinda the point babe_.” he whispers with a wink, mimicking his tone. Before Liam can say anything else, Zayn rolls his eyes.

 

“Look, they're about to perform something and I need to make an impression if I ever wanna complete my mission to become Eggsy's full time groupie so my helpful suggestion to you is, if you want to tell a girl what you think she should and shouldn't do, you should probably stop riding _my_ dick and go hop on your _girlfriend's_ . Would that be okay for you, _dad?_ ” Zayn smiles, all sarcastic, before huffing out, shaking his head as he walks away.

 

Liam watches him go, utterly confused. What the hell was his problem all of the sudden? It was like there was something in the air, “everyone be pissed at Liam tonight” gas. He can't even dwell on it for that long because behind him, he hears a disturbing conversation taking place between the 3 members of High Tide about Zayn.

 

“Hey, are you sure that twinky that just left is the guy she was talking about?” Xander, the bass player asks. Liam keeps his back turned, quickly pretending to look at his phone so they won't knew he's listening.

 

“Yeah, I was wondering that too. Did you hear how he was talking just then? His body count is probably higher than all of ours put together. Maybe your cousin got the wrong person... a lot of guys look like that.” Stephen, the redhead on the drums chimes.

 

Liam’s forehead wrinkles in confusion. What the hell were they talking about?

 

“Look, she's been living in this town for a year now to get a virgin a _reason._ There’s less than 800 people. She knows everyone. And she said he's a faggot. Of course this is the right one, look at his _face_.” Eggsy counters and Liam's whole body tenses up after that. He turns around, glaring at them. Eggsy rubs his chin.

 

“He was practically ready to drop to his knees in front of me when he came over. He's definitely a virgin.”

 

Liam marches over to them, angrily interrupting their discussion.

 

“‘cuse me,” he says loud enough to get their attention. They all look at Liam, startled.

 

“That's my best friend you’re talking about and he’s like your biggest fan. And you're right, he is a virgin but that shouldn't even concern you because he'd never sleep with homophobic pricks like you anyways.” Liam tells them off then promptly turns away, leaving them stunned.

 

He makes his way to the kitchen, the most crowded room of all because this was where all the alcohol was. Zayn is already on his way back over to the band with two drinks, shoulders sagging when he sees Liam coming over.

 

“What now?” he groans. Liam only hesitates a little, still put off with Zayn's tone.  

 

“I know you're sick of me saying this but… I don't think you should talk to Eggsy or any of the band anymore.”

 

Zayn pulls a confused face, not at all expecting Liam to say that.

 

“Why? I'm like 90% sure he wants me. This should cover the other 10.” he says, gesturing to the drinks as he makes his way through the house with Liam trailing close behind.

 

“They're only interested in you because they think you're a _virgin_. I heard them talking about you. Those guys are dicks Zayn.”

 

“What?” Zayn stops in his tracks, frowning.

 

“Why would they think that? Do I look like a fucking _virgin_?”

 

Liam tenses up.

 

“Is something wrong with that?” Liam asks, feeling like that was some sort of dig aimed at him seeing that Zayn knows Liam _is_ one.

 

Obviously “looking like a virgin” meant you look like someone no one would ever have sex with. Liam knew he wasn’t the most attractive guy in the world but he didn’t need to be reminded of it. Especially if it’s coming from someone that looks like _Zayn…_ or just coming from Zayn in general.

 

It’s obvious he’s pissed at Liam. Whenever he's mad, he's all sarcastic and distant, and right now, even as he's standing in front of Zayn he couldn't feel more far apart from him. He’s treating Liam how he treats everyone else. Liam absolutely hated when Zayn was like this, especially when he doesn't even know why.

 

Zayn rolls his eyes.

 

“No. There's nothing wrong with being a virgin Liam. Some people even have fetishes for that type of shit. You know, those freaks that purposefully search for boys who’ve never been intimate with anyone ever so they can deflower them, pretending like she likes him when she's really just after the first dibs on his _dick_.”

 

Liam squints at him, shaking his head

 

“What are you even going on about? It wasn't like a fetish type of thing. They were talking about _using_ you for something. I don't even think Eggsy is gay-”

 

“Liam, stop!” Zayn yells as closes his eyes briefly and his face contorts into contempt, done with Liam’s incessant concern.

 

“So he wants to use me because he thinks I'm a virgin? _Let him._ Maybe that's the hot trend now. Who the fuck cares? I'm not trying to marry the bloke. All I wanna do is fuck an indie boy band member. That's like at the top of my bucket list. Even if he isn't gay, he sure as hell seemed into me. Unless it’s _you,_ who I’m fucking shouldn’t be your concern. So can you stop being so goddamn aggy? You're starting to _annoy_ me.”

 

As he walks away, Liam stands there, feeling his stomach hop into his throat. It’s more than just from Zayn's attitude with him. It's the entire build up of tonight. He could handle being benched for all their games and the whole team poking fun at him for it. He could handle Sophia's constant mood swings. He could even handle his favourite band turning out to be nothing like he thought they would. But he couldn't handle all that AND Zayn being angry at him. He just couldn't.

 

"I'm sorry." He says and Zayn stops, turning his head to the side a little.  
  
"You're sorry for what?"  
  
"For whatever I did that upset you." Liam sighs.  
  
"You're sorry for something you don't even know you're sorry for?" Zayn asks as he turns around, casually taking a gulp from one of the drinks in his hand and wincing a little as he stares into it, swirling it around as if he’s bored.    
  
"How's that work?"  
  
"Zayn, please..." Liam whines when he doesn't let up on the sarcasm, walking up to Zayn with his lip poking out in a sad little pout.  
  
He knows Zayn can't stay mad at him when he makes this face. Zayn doesn't budge though, that hard look in his eyes staying unimpressed. Liam gets on his knees, literally groveling, as he clasps his hands together.  
  
"I'll do whatever you want. My heart can't take this any longer." He pretends to weep. "Please stop being mad at me."  
  
Zayn huffs out, sitting the glasses on a table so he can cross his arms.  
  
"Get up." He groans.  
  
"Will you stop being mad at me?" Liam bargains with a sweet smile.  
  
"Liam, I'm not mad at you. Now get up, people are _staring_ ." He hisses. Liam refuses, shaking his head.  
  
"You only say Liam when you're mad. I'm not gonna stop until I'm Lima again."  
  
Zayn rolls his eyes  
  
" _L i m a_ . Get. Up."  
  
"Say it like you mean it."  
  
Zayn looks behind him, into the foyer seeing the band starting to set up then looks back at Liam, running out of patience.

 

"Seriously, stop dicking around! They're about to start!"  
  
Liam pouts even more, scrunching up his face. Zayn really tries to keep looking hard but, he knows he's no match for Liam's puppy dog face. Finally, he cracks. His shoulders fall as his head nods back, shaking his head then grabbing Liam's arm and forces him to his feet.  
  
"Goddamn it bean," he grumbles and Liam's tummy flutters as he grins over having won back his soft Zayn.    
  
"You’re so immature."  
  
"But I said I'm sorry and I genuinely mean it so will you please forgive me? You know,  for doing something I didn't even know I did?” he smiles all pretty and sweet.

 

Zayn crosses his arms, looking him in the eye. _Searching_ for something.

 

“Whatever it was, I didn't mean it." He says, serious. His hand thoughtlessly squeezes Zayn's wrist, right over his tattoo, just needing them to be okay. The whole world could be set on fire and Liam wouldn't care, just as long as they were both okay.  
  
Zayn bit his lip, frowning as he debates something internally. It didn't take that long for him to resign, letting the tension he's been holding onto go.  
  
"Alright! God you're such a _cry baby_." He finally says. Liam sighs in relief, slugging his arm over Zayn's shoulder as they head back to the foyer.

 

“And _you_ are such a demonic butthole when you’re angry.”

 

Zayn laughs at Liam always censoring himself, ever the virtuous cherub.

 

“I, an intellectual, know that I am actually a _demonic asshole_ for your information. And I am never _angry_ . Everyone else is the problem.”

Liam looks ahead with furrowed brows.

 

“...except you.” Zayn adds begrudgingly, which makes Liam smile then.

  
"Thank God. I thought I was gonna have to start reciting poetry or something."  
  
"Oh please don't. Groveling is embarrassing enough."  
  
Liam grins, stepping in front of Zayn suddenly, continuing to walk backwards as he clutched his heart theatrically, reciting the only poem he knows because Zayn helped him study it for lit.    
  
"Oh Z, how I love thee, let me count the ways! To the depth and breath and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight for the ends of being in your grace--"  
  
He gets Zayn to laugh, leaping forward as he covers Liam's mouth.  
  
"Oh my god stop! You're not even _saying_ it correctly, didn't I teach you anything?”  
  
Liam removes his hand, holding it against his chest  
  
"I still mean every word."  
  
Zayn's eyes soften as he beams, a rare flush tenting his cheeks again beautifully. Liam stares at it in awe, the pink growing across his nose. Zayn blushing was a sight to behold.

 

Two of Liam’s favorite things mixed together. And two times in one night? It was usually the other way around. Liam decides there's definitely something in the air. Everything was so strange today.

"Okay. I forgive you." He says, earnest.

 

“ _Prick_ .” He adds with a smile, looping his arm through Liam's as they head towards the band, about to start their set.  
  
"I could never resist a boy who's on his knees and begging for me." Zayn smiles all sly, wiggling his eyebrows. Liam pushes him away, pretending to be grossed out although he's secretly relieved to have dirty Zayn back to normal, making cheeky innuendos.  
  
They get to the front of the room where High Tide has set themselves up, a small crowd slowly growing around them. Liam bumps into Sophia again, momentarily thinking she'll be annoyed that they haven't left yet but, she's actually happy to see Liam, suddenly excited to meet Eggsy herself.  
  
"I want to talk to the lead singer! Will you come with me?" She happily raves, waving at Eggsy, trying to get his attention. Liam tilts his head.  
  
"Now why would I want you to meet some dreamy boyband singer?" He asks her, wrapping his arm around her waist. She laughs when he nudges her neck with his nose, kissing her. He was so content with everything back to normal again.

 

Zayn comes up behind them, wrapping his arms around both their shoulders and squeezing tightly in between them.

 

“Thank God that fam’s all back together.” he sighs deeply, kissing Liam on the cheek and then Sophia, sloppily.

 

Sophia makes a disgusted face, wiping her cheek with a scowl and elbowing Zayn away, who laughs and moves on Liam's other side instead, his hand sliding lazily over Liam’s lower back in the process, giving him goosebumps. Sophia shakes her head when Liam smiles tightly at her. She always complained about how touchy Zayn was but, Liam could never get her to understand he was just like that with everyone naturally.

 

“I asked them to play our song.” Zayn says quietly next to him. Liam looks over at him but he’s watching Eggsy. He looks a little nervous, fidgeting with his hair and keeping unnerving focus on Eggsy.

 

“Good evening Manatee,” Eggsy says into his mic.

 

“Its Manningtree!” someone from the crowd shouts. Eggsy makes a face.

 

“Whatever. We're High Tide and this one is called “Inferno” from our latest ep.” He says as they run a few test notes.

 

“Holy shit they’re actually about to play it.” Zayn’s face drains. He’s _really_ nervous now, looking at Liam with anxious eyes. Liam didn’t realize how excited he was to hear them live.

 

Inferno was a song about soulmates, the first one Liam and Zayn ever heard by them and they declared it their song ever since. Liam tries to smile comfortingly so Zayn will calm down but it’s kind of, tight lipped. Thinking about what they said earlier again… he doesn't know how much he's gonna be able to enjoy them anymore.

 

When they start to perform, Liam takes that last thought back. He wasn't gonna enjoy this at all. They absolutely sucked balls live.

 

Eggsy’s voice was so shit, Liam wanted to stab himself deaf. It sounds like a dying animal. Zayn didn't seem to think so. He was singing along and making heart eyes at Eggsy, practically swooning. Even Sophia was really into it. Zayn's hand slips into Liam's as he sways.

He looks at the rest of the party around them, seemingly put on hold as everyone is in the foyer now, turned into a live concert. He can't fathom how he's the only person hearing this.

 

He looks back at Zayn when he suddenly lets go of his hand. He's no longer singing along. He's staring at Eggsy, frozen and unblinking, like he's in some kind of daze.

 

These guys really weren't _that_ attractive. Not to Liam anyways. He's never seen Zayn look at anyone like this though.

 

Actually, Zayn doesn't even seem like he's really looking at anyone. He's more like staring off into space in their general direction. Liam looks back at the band, squinting briefly until he realizes Eggsy's not even singing either. His lips are moving but they're not lining up with the words they're hearing. That plus the way he's leering at Zayn makes Liam's gut churn and it's not from jealousy. Something was off.

 

Suddenly, something else catches his eye in his peripheral vision. Behind a curtain he can see an ominous trail of smoke, smelling it at the same time. Something’s burning. He taps Zayn, trying to get his attention to tell him that something is wrong but the entire side of the wall suddenly bursts into flames right before his eyes.

 

He almost thinks he imagines it as it seemed to literally come out of thin air. It's the most bizarre thing he's ever seen but, he doesn't dwell on it for too long as there's a fucking fire in front of them and he needs to act fast.

  
Chaos ensues soon after as the music stops and people start trampling over each other as the crowd makes a mad dash to get away from the fire but, the whole room seems to already be catching on.  
  
Liam goes to get Zayn but his heart drops when he looks over and he's not there anymore. The real panic starts when pieces of wood from the ceiling start to fall, ablaze and crushing people below it. Liam swears he can hear their bones crushing as it does so and… holy shit, this was really happening. When he said the whole world could be on fire, he didn't mean it _literally._

 

Frantically, he tries to move fast, looking around for Zayn, almost choking on smoke as he tries to make his way through the lit house, helping anyone he finds that's been trampled over, one of them being Louis.

 

“Have you seen Zayn?” he asks him. Louis only shakes his head, coughing. Liam helps him up, making sure he's okay and continues on, getting pushed and shoved around trying to make it through the stampede of people. Next to him, an entire wooden stairwell collapses, everyone running down it being incinerated. The only thing stopping Liam from not fainting from the heat or freezing in shock is the adrenaline.

 

Right up ahead, he sees the front door, making a run for it but stopping right before he gets out. Somehow, he just knows Zayn is still in the house. He can just feel it. Instead of saving himself like any sane person would, he turns back around, following his gut. He runs back into the foyer where it started, ignoring the people on fire and the sickening smell he knows is gonna stain his clothes and skin. Zayn is there, huddled in a corner with his hands over his head, which is bleeding.

 

Liam immediately grabs him. There's a wicked burn on his arm, right through the skin, peeling off his entire forearm. Liam can't even look at it or he'll be sick. Zayn can't move, he's so stunned. Liam doesn't wait for him to snap out of it. He practically drags him out, going back towards the front door but, it’s impossible now. It's covered in flames. They're gonna die.

 

Just as Liam is thinking there's no they’re gonna live, Harry grabs them.

 

“Oh thank God,” he gasps, then shouts that he knows a way out. Liam follows him with Zayn into a bathroom nearby, kicking out a window just big enough for them to crawl through.

 

Liam comes out last, exhaustion washing over him when the clean, cool air rushes into his burning lungs. He and Harry both collapse to the ground, flat on their backs as they wheeze for life.

 

“We're… alive.” Harry gasps, almost coughing up a lung. An explosion from the house in front jolts them.

 

“Barely,” Liam hacks. His glasses are almost completely ruined, black stained and scratched up to the point of no recovery.

 

He takes then off and looks over at Zayn, who is sitting straight up on the ground and staring at the house in front of them as it burns down, not even blinking. He hasn't said a word.

 

“I think he's in shock.” Harry says, sitting up as well. They all watch the whole thing burn, more explosions making parts of the house collapse, people on fire running out and all. It was the most horrible thing Liam had ever witnessed. Typical day in Manningtree.

 

Suddenly behind them, Eggsy Miller walks up, appearing totally unscathed unlike literally _everyone_ else.

 

“God, I've been looking all over for you guys. I'm glad you made it out.” He says with a drink in his hand. Liam and Harry both look at him like he's insane as he casually drinks his liquor, watching the fire like this is totally normal. He leans down in front of them.

 

“Hey, it's kinda dangerous out here. Do you guys wanna come somewhere safer? Like my van?”

 

Liam scowls at him, wondering why he doesn't just leave them alone. Zayn looks at Eggsy and starts nodding, blood still coming out of a gash in his head. Eggsy smiles at him.

 

“Yeah? This one's in with it.” he grasps Zayn's wounded arm and to Liam’s horror, Zayn just stands up, tripping as he lets this stranger lead him away to a creepy white van with all the windows blacked out. Harry and Liam both look at each other then start freaking out.

 

Liam is instantly on his feet, yelling at Zayn to stop and come back with them. Eggsy tells him to wait there while he brings the van around.

 

“Have you lost your fucking mind!?” Harry yells at him when they catch up.

 

“You're hurt, we need to go to the hospital!”

 

Zayn doesn’t seem to hear him, reaching into his pocket to hand Liam the keys to his car.

 

“Don’t walk home okay?”

 

That's all Zayn says. Liam gapes at the keys then looks at Zayn, staring ahead at the van coming over.

 

“Oh my god, he's serious.” Harry says, running both his hands through his hair as he paces briefly.

 

The vans stops in front of them, door sliding open, revealing the rest of the band in the back, waiting for Zayn to get in. Liam grabs his arm, the one that isn't half skinless, holding onto him.

 

“Please don't go with them. Zayn, _please_.” Liam begs, pleading. Zayn doesn’t even look at him, pulling his arm away as he gets into the van. All they could do was watch as they shut the door, and drive away. Liam just knows something terrible was about to happen.

 

The van speeds off, kicking up thick dust.

 

“We have to follow them.” Liam says, sprinting towards Zayn's car. Harry runs after him.

 

“Are you crazy too? We can’t follow them. What if they're like, rapists? Or murderers?”

 

They get into the car and Liam speeds in the direction they went, probably not fit to drive without his glasses.

 

“What if they are? They took Zayn! You think I'm gonna just leave him and go home after all this?”

 

“Liam, they didn't take him. He willingly went with them.”

 

“No,” Liam shakes his head as he's driving, squinting at the road ahead

 

“Something was wrong. He looked like a freaking zombie… I think they did something to him.”

 

“Like what?’

 

“I don't know! I can't explain it. Something was just off about the whole thing.”

 

They come up to a fork in the road, neither of them having any idea which way the van went. They sit there for a moment, Liam feeling hopeless.

 

“Liam,” Harry puts his hand on his shoulder as he starts breathing heavily, feeling his throat close up. They lost him.

 

He leans his head down on the wheel, squeezing his eyes shut. If anything happened to Zayn and he never saw him again… he would just die.

 

After a minute of nothing, he sits back up, breathing out shaky. There was nothing they could do except wait for tomorrow. Neither of them were feeling very optimistic after what just happened to them to them.

 

Liam drives Harry home in silence before heading home himself. Harry calls him later on, making sure Liam is alright. Harry is the only person who knows about Liam’s dissociative disorder. It doesn’t react well with traumatic experiences and Liam doesn’t think this time is any exception.

 

“How do you feel? Do you feel anything at all?” Harry asks him carefully.

 

Liam tells him he feels worried sick about Zayn, which is good. He’s not numb. But also not good because _Zayn_.

 

In the middle of their call, there's a loud knock at the front door downstairs. The only other person he lived with was his mother and she worked late at night, not supposed to be back until the morning.

 

“Stay on the phone with me.” Liam tells Harry as he goes to see who it is. Harry tells him to just stay in his room and get some rest but, he still goes anyways.

 

He slowly makes his way downstairs to see who it could possibly be but when he opens the door, they're gone.  

 

“There’s no one here…” he murmurs, looking around. There really wasn't anyone anywhere.

 

“Are you sure you heard knocking? Maybe you're just tired.”

 

“You're probably right. I just need some rest.” he sighs, rubbing his eyes.

 

Liam heads back to his room, beginning to trudge upstairs but, something stops him. After standing there in silence for a few seconds, a sound in the house makes him jump. It's not loud, just a faint tap. But when you're in an empty house, even the sound of your own breathing can sound like the loudest thing in the world.

 

He doesn't know why but, he decides to follow it, slowly walking to where the sound is coming from, ending up in the kitchen. It's just the faucet dripping. Liam sighs, shaking his head. He needed to go to sleep or he would lose it. Before he does though, he goes to turn off the faucet completely.

 

He stands there for a moment, trying to wrap his head around the last few hours. He can't believe he's still alive right now. As he goes to leave, he turns around and screams when he's met with a very filthy Zayn, standing in the middle of the kitchen, covered in what looks like dirt. Liam holds his own chest, feeling like he's on the verge of a heart attack before walking over to him.  
  
"Jesus Christ, you scared me half to death. I was so worried about you, what happened?" he asks. Zayn doesn't say anything. He just stands there, staring.

 

When Liam gets closer, he stops, squinting at the ground in front of Zayn. There's blood dripping off of him. Behind him, he's trailed it through the house, along with something dark and ashen looking. He's never known Zayn to trail dirt on his shoes. Or let his appearance slip so much as a hair out of place on his head. But they did just manage to escape a raging fire so, Liam wasn’t expecting him to be in the greatest shape.

 

He's still hurt. Actually… he looks more than hurt. But Liam's vision is complete shit without his glasses.  
  
"Zayn...what," Liam looks back up at him  
  
"What happened to you? How did you get here? Wha--"  
  
Zayn walks over to the fridge, still not having said anything. He raids it, pulling almost everything out until he finds a whole chicken, uncooked. Liam can't even say anything, feeling his nerves skyrocket.

 

Zayn wasn't just being weird. He was starting to freak Liam out. Something horrible just happened to them and here he is now, bleeding and covered in God knows what, eating raw meat off the floor. Last Liam checked, Zayn was a vegetarian. He hadn't known him to eat meat in his lifetime (not the food kind anyways). But, that was the last thing he was worried about right now.  
  
He slowly approaches Zayn, shaking as he watches him tear into the chicken like some kind of animal, shoving bits of it into his mouth. Even some bone.  
  
"Zayn," Liam says carefully, bending down in front of him. Zayn looks at him and makes an inhuman screech, so loud Liam has to cover his ears. Immediately after, Zayn retchs, spewing out an impossible amount of pitch black bile, projectile vomiting all over the floor, half on Liam's pants. The stuff almost looks alive as it pulses and smokes. Liam stands up, covering his mouth in shock while Zayn begins to laugh sickeningly.  
  
He squats down, grabbing him on the sides of his face, moving his matted hair out of his eyes.  
  
"Zayn, listen to me. We're gonna go to the car and take you to the hospital." He says, slowly  
  
"You have burns all over your--" Liam stops when he looks down on Zayn's arm, blinking a few times. His eyesight might've been bad but, that didn't mean whole scars he knows was there before would disappear.

 

The burns are gone. And being up this close now, Liam can see that Zayn is covered completely in ash and blood. All over his hands and clothes... and his mouth. His eyes look almost completely black. Not even the white part visible and the sight of it shocks Liam to his core.  
  
He's on his feet within seconds, terrified as he bolts out of the kitchen, to the stairs, trying to get to his room so he can call someone. The police? Harry? The Queen? He doesn't even know. He just had to get away from whatever the hell that thing was in his kitchen because it wasn't Zayn.

  
Before he can even get past one step, he's being grabbed from behind and roughly shoved up against the wall.

 

Zayn crowds up in Liam's space, breathing rigidly all over his neck briefly before pulling back a little to see the tears on Liam's face, feeling him trembling.  
  
"Are you scared?" Zayn whispers. Liam squeezes his eyes shut so he won’t have to look into his black eyes, more tears streaming down his face as he nods. It feels like something is crawling around inside his body… like cool air sweeping around inside.  
  
Zayn leans in again, scraping sharp teeth against a vein in Liam's neck, his hands moving up his chest, wrapping around his throat.

 

“You should be.”

 

His grip tightens as he almost bites into Liam's throat with teeth that feel razor sharp, nearly drawing blood but he abruptly pulls away before he can break the skin, pushing Liam across the hall so hard, he puts a crack in the wall.

  
Liam clutches his throat, coughing out and wincing at the sharp pain in his back. His glasses are crushed in his pocket under his weight, completely destroyed now. Before he can even blink, he’s alone.


	2. Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The whole world is watching everyone in Manningtree cry. Everyone except for Zayn that is. He's been acting weird since the fire and Liam is going to figure out why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warning** This part has graphic depictions of violence. It starts at the scene in the woods
> 
> Also added note, DO NOT repost my story anywhere. If I've asked you not to, please remove it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
The next day at school, everyone is terribly depressed and mourning the tragic event. Over 50 people that came to Niall's party had either died or were badly injured, including Niall himself who was in the hospital, stuck in a coma.

 

Parts of his body were reportedly mutilated, like some kind of animal tried to eat him. This didn't happen to anyone else but Niall. He lived, though, which was more than other teens here could say.

  
The tragedy made international news, the first time Manningtree had got this much attention since the Necromancy crisis hundreds of years ago. A lot of people didn't even come to school because of emotional distress but, Liam did.

 

During his first class, all they talk about is the fire.

 

He zones out, disassociating from everything as he thinks back to simpler times in his childhood. Like the day in Harry's attic when they tattooed each other.

 

Zayn was really good at drawing so he drew them all out. Liam's moon was the easiest. It was just a simple crescent, no bigger than the size of a thimble. Zayn's was tricky cause the sun has all these differently shaped, curvy triangular rays coming from all sides of it. All Liam had to do was trace over what Zayn drew on his wrist.

  
"We're gonna get in so much trouble." Liam murmured, staring at them side by side after they were done. If they could overlap their arms, the moon would sit right in the sun, lying on its side lazily. Zayn shook his head, telling Liam if his mum saw it, they could just pretend it was pen ink.

 

Harry also checked them out, scratching his curly mop of hair in confusion.

 

"Why are you the moon if Liam's got the moon?" He asked Zayn as they admired their wrists.

  
"Because everyone knows the moon is a lesbian," he told him. Harry nodded. He didn't know that.

  
“Oh… that's nice.”

 

"This way if I'm ever not around, he can just look this little gay moon and I'll be there. Forever.”

 

“And Liam's always got his head in the clouds…” Harry murmured.

 

“Cause he's the star.” Zayn smiled.

 

"So... you guys are getting married now, right?" Harry smiles, and Zayn agreed he would as long as Liam promised to never leave him.

 

It was a nice day.

 

Liam really did think that as long as they had these, no matter where they were, they'd still always come back to each other. What was the moon without it's sun?

 

"Hey, Bean." Zayn's voice intercepts his thoughts, bringing him back to the present. Liam's eyes flickered, momentarily doing a double take as he fixes his new glasses. Zayn is all smiles in front of him. Bright eyed and just as flawless as ever. Like... unbelievably flawless. Even for Zayn.

  
His skin looks fresh and new, cleanly shaven. His hair is slightly damp but, slicked back and just a little bouncier. Healthier. Even his eyelashes seemed thick and longer. He's taken all his ear piercings and nose ring out but aside from that, he looks like a freaking angel. After the state he was in last night, Liam is almost at a lost for words.

 

"You're… okay?" Liam mumbles, utterly taken aback as he adjusts his glasses. Zayn makes a face at him as he nods slowly, sitting down next to Liam.

 

When he sits, Liam gets a whiff of something burning hot in his nose. Everything smelled like it was burning now but it seems like it’s radiating off of Zayn in a different way. It’s so strong, he almost wants to cover his nose so he won’t gag from the punch of it.

 

"Yeah... why wouldn't I be?" He asks, acting as if Liam's confusion is totally unfounded. He stares at Zayn with wide eyes, shaking his head

 

"What about last night… at my house-"

 

"You know, you do have a tendency to overreact. Remember that time in year 7 when Louis pushed you into that rose bush so you had to get a shot and you practically cried the whole time even though you didn't even feel it?"

 

Liam blinks at him. Was he really hallucinating that much yesterday?

 

"Zayn... people died last night. Like… a lot of people. It's all over the news. Half the school didn't even show up today from being traumatised."

 

Zayn looks into his phone, checking himself out in the camera with admiration.

 

"Anybody we know?" He asks, fixing one strand of hair so it’s not sticking out of place in the front. Liam squints at him.

 

"There's only 3 high schools and we grew up with everyone in them. Who don't we know?"

 

Zayn only shrugs, like he doesn’t really care.

 

"What's... wrong with you?" Liam didn't really mean to ask that out loud but, it just slips.

 

"What's wrong with _you_?" Zayn shoots back, looking him sharply, before grimacing.

 

"And why are you wearing those gross glasses?"

 

Liam takes them off and rubs his eyes. They were twice the size of his old ones, square instead of round and an ugly eggshell white instead of rose gold. He’s sure he looks like a geezer today. And here was Zayn to remind him.

 

"Because my other glasses were pretty much destroyed. You know, in the fire we almost died in 8 hours ago? The one a lot of our friends burned to death in?" Liam doesn't dare mention last night again.

 

Something about the entire encounter was so bizarre, he really didn't even think it happened anymore. Like the fire had just rattled him and he got so worked up about Zayn’s well being that his mind just imagined Zayn coming to his house. They told him hallucinations were a weird thing from his brain disorder although the doctors don't have an explanation for why. Hell, maybe Liam was just plain crazy.

 

Zayn leans back in his chair, bored.

 

"You mean _my_ friends?" He corrects him, "The only friends you have are me and Harry so I don't know what you're so hung up over. We're still alive. I'm the one who should be skipping school for emotional distress." He huffs. Liam doesn't even know who he's talking to right now. He's past the point of being hurt by words, though.

  
"But... you're not stressed." He mutters to himself although, Zayn still glances at him briefly, as if he heard him. The burning smell is seriously crawling up his nose. He's almost sweating from the heat radiating off Zayn.

 

"What is that _smell_? Do you have new cologne?" Liam winced. Zayn turns away from him then.

 

He takes out a cigarette, right there while they're sitting in class. The teacher only remarks about it briefly but lets it slide when Zayn blames “the stress”.

 

_'I almost died last night and I am VERY emotionally unstable right now, miss. I think we can all agree on havin' a smoke don't ya agree?'_

 

Liam can’t believe the things people were getting away with just because of the fire. Someone even brought their dogs to school to help with the coping. Two fully grown german Shepherds walking around with Calvin Rodgers to every class. Liam swears he could start shooting up heroin in the hall right now and be excused for it as long as he blamed “the stress”.

 

“Since when do you smoke cigarettes again?” Liam grimaced as some of it blows in his direction. Zayn rolls his eyes.

 

“First I stink and now you complain about this which I figured would smell better. Can you make up your fucking mind?”

 

“I didn't say you _stink_ -”

 

“ _Fuck sake_ ,” Zayn groans in annoyance as he gets up and leaves in the middle of class without another word.

 

Liam watches him leave, dizzily. He’s starting to wonder what has become of their lives. It's like everything flipped on his head in one night. Well… it kind of did. No mentions of last night, after the fire from Zayn. No apology, or explanation. Liam is convinced it didn't happen.

 

Later on in the day, when Harry is walking into the loo, he runs into Liam, the first he's seen of him since last night.

 

"Hey."

 

Liam looks at him in the mirror from where he's examining his throat.

 

"I was just talking to Tom about Niall. He still hasn't woken up yet. He said some of his bones and ribs were even crushed. No just broken, like totally shattered. Isn't that insane?" Harry says, leaning against the sink next to Liam, who shakes his head regretfully.

 

"How is Tom holding up?"

 

Harry shakes his head

 

"Not at all. He wouldn't stop crying."

 

Niall was probably the only person Tom ever did anything with, rarely ever separated. There was even a rumour that they might be more than friends.

 

Liam can’t even bare to think about how he’d be if that happened to Zayn or Harry. Zayn was right, they were the only friends he really had.

 

"God. I feel so bad for him." Liam says sadly, rubbing his neck. Harry notices something there on the side.

  
“I thought you were refraining from looking at mirrors?” Harry asks. Liam nods.

 

“I am, I'm just trying to see my neck.”

 

"Liam... is that..." He looks closer at it then as his eyes bulge

 

"A _love bite_?"

  
Liam tilts his head from side to side.

 

"Kind of--"

 

"Did Sophia come over last night? "

 

Liam bites his lip, shaking his head

 

"No. But… Zayn did… I think?”

 

"What?!? He gave you that?" Harry smiles excitedly. He’s been waiting for this moment to happen. Liam nods, turning around.

 

"Yeah, he also gave me this.”

 

He hikes up his shirt, showing Harry his back, marred with a painful looking purplish black bruise going all across the middle.

 

"Or at least something that looked like Zayn did it. I'm still trying to figure out if it really happened."

 

" _Oh my god_ ," Harry gasps "You look like someone hit you across your back with a fucking bat! Are you alright?”

 

Liam puts his shirt back down and whips around.

 

"Good, so you see it too. I'm not actually going crazy."

 

"What do you mean? "

 

"He doesn’t seem to remember doing it. I showed it to Sophia and she said it didn’t look that bad. She even suggested I talk to a therapist. She thinks I did this to myself. I was starting to think I did this to myself!”

 

“Alright love, slow down.” Harry holds his shoulders before he starts freaking out totally.

 

“Are you all the way here right now?” Harry holds one finger up in the air a few inches away from Liam’s face, moving it in front of his eyes to make sure he can follow it like how his doctors used to do. Liam’s eyes move normally as he nods. So he’s not spacing out at least.

 

“Then you're _fine_. Just tell us what happened?"

 

Liam tells him everything he remembers that took place last night. Zayn showing up in his house, looking like he'd been hit by a flaming bus and then stabbed a thousand times. Him eating _raw chicken_ and then barfing up sewage. Throwing Liam around like he was a fucking rag doll. Trailing ash all through Liam's house. Liam stayed up all night cleaning the aftermath off of his floor. It stained his nails. How does he explain that?

 

He wasn't afraid to tell Harry this kind of stuff, even if he knows he sounds insane saying it out loud. Not just because he knows about his dissociative disorder. Also because Harry still treated him like a normal person despite his issues and not like he was dealing with a freak like how most people here do and they don't even know the whole truth.

  
"Harry he threw up all over me, it was so disgusting. The smell of it is still in my nose."

 

"Shit, " Harry murmurs "I still have the smell of burning flesh in my nose."

 

Liam nods

 

"Yeah, that too." He sighs.

 

"So you really believe me? "

 

"Of course I believe you."

 

That was a relief. Sophia probably thinks he's crazy now and he didn't even tell her half of what he told Harry. But this was Harry. Of course, he was gonna believe him. She seemed more shocked that Liam was even alive more than anything else. Almost like she wasn't expecting him to survive or something.

  
"I just saw Zayn last period. He seemed totally normal." Harry says. Liam quirks an eyebrow at him.

  
“Really?”

 

"Yeah. Everyone looks like death today and then there's Zaynie, winking his Bambi eyes at all the pretty boys and girls that stare, as always."

  
"No, not his appearance. It's Zayn. That's like a given. I mean really as in did he _really_ seem normal to you? Like, when he talked to you. He didn't seem off?"

 

Harry shrugs after thinking for a moment

 

“I don't really know. I mean, everyone is a little off today, you know? We didn't have like a full blown conversation. He was just asking me stuff about Tom.”

 

“Like what?” Liam asks, picking up his bag.

 

“I dunno. Random stuff. What's he likes to do, if I think he's really hooking up with Niall…” Harry says aimlessly as he washes his hands.

 

“You don't think that's _weird_?”

 

Harry shakes his head

 

“It's not weird. Maybe a little unexpected. He probably likes him.” Harry shrugs.

 

“He said he wanted to take him out for lunch. I think he wanted to know a few things about him so they'd have something to talk about.”

 

Liam pauses briefly

 

“Tom and Zayn? Of all the people in this dumb town, he likes _Tom_? They barely even talk, why would he be interested in him now?”

 

Harry laughs at Liam's sudden apprehension towards Tom as he dries his hands.

 

“What?”

 

"Oh, nothing." Harry sighs simply, smiling.

  
On their way out, they run smack into Louis coming in, almost knocking him into the ground. He's so short, Liam didn't see him. Usually, Louis would yell insults at Liam for something like that but, instead, he awkwardly stands there for a second.

  
"Hey, Lou." Harry tries so sound friendly. Usually, Harry would ignore Louis cause he's an asshole to Liam, and his best friend's enemies were his enemies but, obviously the mood was a bit sombre today.

  
Louis nods, looking just as horrible as most of the kids that showed up today. There's some obvious burns on the sides of his face and his arm is all wrapped up in gauze.

 

Liam and Harry move out of his way so he can go inside. Right before he goes, he calls out for them. When Liam turns around, he's looking at the ground.

 

"Thanks for... helping me last night." He says, quietly. Liam looks to the side a little, unsure of what to say.

 

"Of course. I mean, we're practically in-laws so..."

  
Louis snorts at that, shaking his head as he looks at him

 

"Not really." He says.

 

"Anyways, it was really intense. I think I was actually dead until I felt your hands pulling to my feet. I probably wouldn't be here right now if you hadn't happened to see me. I was up all night, thinking about it, and what'd I'd say to you when I saw you again..." He goes on, then takes a deep breath.

  
"I'm really glad you made it out alive too. God knows what would happen to Zayn if you didn't," he chuckles "and, also..." He closes his eyes now

 

"If I've ever been a dick to you...I'm sorry." He finishes, shocking Liam.

 

"Uh... yeah. You're... alright Lou." Liam says, clearing his throat. Louis nods and finally goes on.

 

"Wow. Did Louis Tomlinson just say thank you and acknowledge that he's a dick or am I going mad?" Harry laughs as they go to their next class. Liam shrugs. He's just as surprised as Harry. They were obviously in the twilight zone right now.

 

“I don’t even know what he was talking about.” Liam laughs.

 

“Obviously he’s grateful that you saved his fucking life.”

 

“Yeah well I don’t remember doing that.”

 

Harry frowns.

 

“I thought you said you felt fine?”

 

“Of course I don’t feel fine! I almost died last night and I can’t even remember it!”

 

Harry shakes his head solemnly. He kind of wishes he could forget the fire too. Liam forgetting stuff like this was kind of bittersweet. It wasn’t a huge thing with his disassociation but it happens a couple times a year. Amnesia wasn’t something Liam obviously liked but it was nice to forget traumatic things sometimes. The actual fire itself was a big empty space in his memory. When he tries to think about it, all he sees is Zayn’s strange face and his burned arm. Him climbing into that van keeps replaying over and over like a scratched disc on a turntable.

 

"Maybe things are turning around. Not just for Louis but... all of us. Like, a new leaf." Harry starts one of his star child rants about "karma" and "energies", and how near death experiences bring people closer together.

  
"Harry, almost 50 people that we know, people we were in nappies with, just died in a freak accident. We almost joined them! In what universe could you possibly spin this to be something positive?”

 

Harry thinks for a moment like he's actually trying to find a reason before he shrugs, slinging his arm over Liam's shoulder.

  
“Well, look at it this way. Things can only go up from here. It's _Manningtree_ Liam. The very worst of our problems already happened 400 years ago. After a tragedy, we grieve and we move on. That’s all we can do and we’re doing it together. Life balances out everything mate. After death is rebirth and life. That’s where we’re headed now. Up and onwards.”

Say what you want about Harry but you could never say he didn’t make you want to just sit with him in the hippie dojo he turned his attic into and eat a pot brownie with him so you can see things from his perspective and feel half as positive as he did no matter what. Liam could always count on him to convince him that maybe the world wasn’t actually ending.

He thought about all the kids he'd never see in the halls again with a heavy weight on his heart. He thought about Louis sitting up all night coming up with a way to thank Liam despite whatever hostility that was once there. And he thought everything with Zayn, just hoping it was going to be okay. He usually would be walking with them right now so, Liam guessed he was following through with the skipping for the "emotional distress" thing.

  
Everyone was thinking about each other, trying to keep it all together. Harry’s right.

 

Things could only get better from now. They couldn't have possibly been more wrong than they were in that instant.

 

  
*

 

  
Just outside, near the football field while everyone else is sulking to class, or writing angsty poetry in the bathrooms or lighting candles for makeshift vigils in front of empty lockers, or having mosh pits with heavy metal blasting from boomboxes in the quad to process their grief, Tom Harlock is processing his stages by sitting in the middle of the field, crying his heart out as he holds his team captains jersey into his chest while drinking a beer. Someone brought a keg to school to serve drinks in homage to Niall's epic party. Even some teachers were partaking.

  
All of this may seem bizarre to outsiders but Manningtree was the smallest town in Essex. Probably even in England. When someone's _dog_ dies, it's like time stops. This crisis had dropped their population of youth by a pretty huge percentage, almost 15%. No one was prepared for or knew how to react so, things like peers and administrators having drinks and maybe a cigarette together in class was a thing right now.

  
Tom looks up when he notices a little dot coming his way from the school, squinting to make sure it is who he _thinks_ it is.

 

He sees Zayn's face clearly when he steps onto the field, hands in his pockets, just strolling over oh so smoothly. Tom quickly wipes away his tears and stands up, chugging his drink quickly and tossing his cup behind him. When he looks back up, Zayn goes from being across the field to standing right in front of him in an impossible amount of time. Tom jumps a little at the suddenness of it.

 

“Oh, h-hi Zayn.” Tom stammers nervously, smiling a little. Zayn tilts his head to the side.

 

“I couldn't help noticing… you looked so lonely out here. I thought I'd keep you company.”

 

Tom makes a face

 

“Really?” He blurts, then immediately backtracks so he won't insinuate the bad reputation of why Zayn would ever care about _anyone_.

 

“I mean… yeah. I guess,” his shoulders fall then as he sighs “I am a little lonely.”

 

Zayn’s expression looks sympathetic, like how someone might look at a stray kitten. Or Lion finding a wounded doe…

 

“I feel the same. It's a real shame what happened to Niall.”

 

Tom looks up at him suddenly, narrowing his eyes when Zayn brings up Niall to him. Seeing that he’s made out with him right in front of Tom on several different occasions…

 

“He was your best friend, right?”

 

Tom snorts, shoving his hands in his pockets.

 

“He was my only friend. But, none of that means anything if he doesn't wake up.”

 

“Well, I'm your friend too Tommy.”

 

Tom would laugh at that if he could manage anything more than a simper right now but, he doesn't when he sees Zayn is serious. If he can recall, the last time Zayn said anything more than a “hello” to him, they were on a field trip to botanical gardens like 8 years ago.

 

“Really?”

 

Zayn nods

 

“Of course. I was looking for you at the party last night but, we never crossed paths I guess.”

 

Tom actually does snort this time, just knowing that Zayn is fucking with him now. He walked right past Tom at the party. It wasn't that Zayn ignored him on purpose. He just never really noticed him… until now apparently.

 

"Were you now," Tom says, blank faced. Zayn nods, looking off to the side as he took out a cigarette, lighting up.

  
"Yeah. Ended up just talking to Niall actually, right before the fire. I'm probably the last person he talked to. You know, like ever. He really likes you, y'know."

  
“Really?” Tom finds himself saying again as he perks up a little, watching Zayn blow out smoke as he nods.

 

“What did he say?”

 

“He mostly just talked about you. How funny you are and how you're really good at photography and stuff.”

 

“He said that?” Tom almost blushes. Few people know about how much photography means to him. Taking pictures to capture moments he’ll keep forever.

 

Zayn nods.

 

“You know what else he said?”

 

Tom waits for him to go on. Zayn flicks his cigarette to the side, stepping closer to Tom, towards his ear.

 

"That you've got a real pretty _cock_ too," he says, lips just barely grazing his skin. Tom's breath hitches, his immediate response being to lean into it.

  
“Said it tastes like _heaven_.”

 

Zayn's fingers wrap around the side of his throat, letting his lips drag from Tom's ear to his jaw, eyes focused on how Tom's roll back into his head as he closes them.

 

“ _Zayn_ ,” he gasps, holding onto Zayn's hand almost choking him. Zayn's tongue traces over the outside of his ear, nibbling on the lobe.

 

“You gonna let me taste you?” He asks, low. Tom nods, a shiver shooting up his spine when Zayn's other hand goes under his shirt and digs into the skin around his waist.

 

He can't even seem to control his own actions anymore, trying to go in and kiss Zayn, his hand gravitating towards his dick but, Zayn pulls away from Tom, holding both hands against his chest now and biting lightly at Tom's bottom lip.

 

“Not here babe.” he says, licking into his mouth a little before he takes his hand and leads him into the woods behind the school.

 

“Come on. I know where we can go.”

 

Tom doesn't question it, letting Zayn lead him wherever.

 

They start full on making out as soon as they’re deep enough in the woods to not see the school anymore. They're in a clearing, leaning against a tree so tall and thick, it just disappears into the sky. As they're kissing, Zayn turns his back to Tom, craning his neck so their lips stay attached as he grabs fistfuls of his hair, his other hand pulling Tom's crotch into his ass, dry humping him against the tree.

 

"Don't cum," Zayn says into his mouth. Tom nods like a bobblehead, so overcome with lust, completely replacing his anguish the moment Zayn touched him. Zayn pushes back against him, feeling how hard he is. When it's hard enough for him, he breaks away from Tom, turning around to get him on his back.

  
He finally gets him to sit on the ground with his back against the tree. Zayn climbs into his lap, wrapping his hand around Tom in his pants to whip out his hard on so he can mount him.

 

“Just relax. You don't have to do anything.” Zayn tells him when he tries to move. He turns out to be heavier than he looks. And stronger. Tom wouldn't be able to move if tried.

 

The moment Zayn sits on his dick and lets it slide inside, Tom's mouth falls open, letting out a low groan, staring up at the endless sky, letting Zayn do what he wants. He’s seeing white when Zayn starts bouncing on it, all hands and teeth on Tom's throat again. The tree behind them is somehow shaking despite its enormous size.

 

“ _Do you miss Niall?_ ” Zayn asks, kissing down his neck as he rides him mercilessly. Tom closes his eyes, feeling a sharp pain in his chest at the mention of Niall as something feels like it's being squeezed inside him.

 

“Yes.” he grunts, the pain spread to his gut, clutching Zayn's back tighter every time he rolls his hips.

 

“Yes I miss him.” the more he admits it, the more it hurts. Not just emotionally. Also physically, like all the anguish is being dragged out of him and into Zayn.

 

“Don't worry. You’ll see him really soon.” Zayn assures him, and it feels like a knife shreds through Tom's stomach from the inside out, making him cry out in pain.

 

His body jolts, eyes springing open, only to be met with the terrifying image of Zayn’s eyes, completely black, which makes him scream even louder. Zayn goes for his neck again, actually biting through the skin and bone like he’s eating a fucking steak. That plus the excruciating pain inside Tom’s body makes him go limp.

 

Zayn proceeds to tilt his head up skyward, opening his mouth wide, expanding it like a snake, more shark-like teeth growing out of the skin and letting out an insidious shriek, starting off high pitched and ending in a low growl, loud enough to rattle the crows out of the woods. He’s not even human anymore. He goes straight for Tom’s guts, actually ripping into his stomach.

 

The screams coming from the woods sound like something straight out of a torture chamber. No one is around to hear them, though, unfortunate for Tom.

 

 

*

 

  
At the very end of the day, Liam and Harry, hitch a ride from Sophia after school. Harry is a little buzzed from doing shots with Cher, Anthony and their friends Joey and Ben during lunch hour. Liam didn’t drink but it was kind of fun watching the four of them trying to out drink each other. It took their minds off the sadness. But Zayn wasn’t there and Liam was suddenly unable to enjoy any of it anymore.

 

Usually, Zayn drove Liam home because cheerleading and football practice happened at the same time but, everything was cancelled in light of a lot a people not being here today. Plus, Zayn obviously decided to skip the rest of the day so, Liam couldn't get a ride even if he wanted.

 

"One girl on the cheer squad died last night," Sophia says wiping her eyes. Liam heard about it. It was Jade. She was the nicest person he'd ever met. She inhaled so much smoke that she suffocated. Her girlfriend Perrie hadn't even come to school. He couldn't imagine what she was going through.

  
"I was gonna stop by Jade's house today with Cher, Ben and Anthony. Do you think I should see if Zayn wants to come see her family with us?" Harry asks from the back. She and Zayn were really close too. Liam watches out the window, steadily, his thoughts a million miles away.

 

"I don't even know where Zayn is."

 

"Isn't that him over there?" Sophia asks as they stop at a light, pointing ahead of them. Liam follows her gaze, looking around the parking lot.

 

"Where?"

 

She points far off from the lot, towards a lake next to the woods behind the school. There's someone swimming out there in the freezing cold water. They had long dark, wavy hair that did resemble Zayn's but, there was no way that was him.

 

"He can't swim," Liam says dismissively.

 

"Are you sure?"

 

The closer they got to the lake, the more the boy swimming in it looked like Zayn. But it was impossible. Zayn was terrified of open water.

 

"Positive." Liam nods, although in the back of his mind, something was telling him he was wrong.

 

He watches the boy climb out of the lake onto the dock, and Liam swears he's completely naked. Liam squints as he watches him, trying to figure out what the hell he's doing swimming around in a freezing lake, _naked_ , in the middle of chilled autumn. He sits down at the edge, leaning down as he stares into the water at his reflection. He just stares at it. All Liam can see is the back of his head and a little bit of his profile. He does look like Zayn but… that couldn’t be him. Liam’s tried to teach Zayn to swim for years and he was terrible.

 

While Liam watches the strange boy gazing into the lake, everyone else's attention has been diverted to something else happening on the other side of the lake, by the woods.

 

"Whoa, guys look!" Harry shouts, pointing to the woods. There are a few ambulance and dozens of people surrounding taped off sections of trees right behind the football field. Even the police were over there.

  
"I wonder what happened..." Sophia murmurs. A team of medics emerge from the forest, wheeling a gurney with a body bag laying on top.

 

"Oh shit... is that-" Harry never finishes the question.

 

"Someone from school?" Sophia finishes.

 

It had to be.

 

They all watch as they carry the body into the truck, a distraught woman being held back at she wailed, crying over the body. The air feels like it stills as they recognise the woman as Harry's next door neighbour, Mrs Harlock. Otherwise known as Tom Harlock's mother.

 

The rest of the car ride is painfully sombre. Everywhere they looked around here, there was death. Manningtree was getting a new reputation.

 

"Do you guys think that was... Tom?" Harry asks, saying what they're all thinking. No one has the answer to that. No one wants the answer to that but, come tomorrow or sooner, they were gonna have it. Nothing to look forward to but the certainty that someone else just died.

 

  
*

 

Liam buries himself in Netflix for the rest of the day when he gets home, just wanting this day to be over. He couldn't watch any other thing on tv or online without being reminded of everything that was happening. Anything remotely related to general violence was triggering. While he's into the 4th season of Adventure Time at 1 in the morning, Zayn calls.

 

"Lima I am feeling like a really hot piece of ass right now." Is the first thing Zayn says when Liam answers the phone. Liam nods, blank-faced as he clicks "next episode".

 

"Good for you. Me? I'm still feeling a little nauseous about the smouldering house incinerating everyone."

 

Zayn ignores Liam's obvious emotional exhaustion from the day.

 

"You should really get over that shit. There's nothing you can do about it. This day could not get any better for me, mate, I feel _amazing_."

 

Liam's face stays blank of emotion even though in his head, he just wants to reach into the phone and scream, “ _Where is Zayn!_?”

 

The one that would never dismiss what happened to them so carelessly. The Zayn that would've stayed in school today, together with of all his friends or showed that his heart was broken too. The one Liam was in…

 

Liam closes his eyes, not even finishing that dumb thought.

 

"Anyways, you should be happy for me. I'm having the best day since the day I lost my virginity." Zayn checks out his body in his wall mirror, looking at his ass as he turns around and bends over to stick it out more in his tighty whities.

 

"That's nice," Liam says, monotone.

 

"You know that feeling when you kiss a boy for the first time and your whole body just feels like it's radiating light? That's how this body feels right now Li."

 

Liam stuffs his mouth with popcorn, shaking his head.

 

"Never kissed a boy." He mumbles with his mouth full.

 

Zayn laughs on the other line.

 

"Yes, you have silly."

 

In the midst of everything that happened, he sort of forgot about them kissing. Actually, not just kissing. Heavily making out. But, that was just because of the game. And okay, maybe Liam hadn't forgotten about it. He was reminded of it wherever he looked. The pink rose bushes at school. A sweet smelling fragrance. A flush on anyone's cheeks. Literally any pair of lips. He shoved it into a corner in his mind to think about later. Later as in not when he's on the phone with Zayn.

  
"I guess it slipped my mind." Liam lies, then quickly adds "What did you do today?" If only to change the subject.

 

"Well, I went out for a nice lunch. Got real full this time."

 

Liam nods, only half listening as Zayn goes on, happy to be talking about himself again. Zayn pauses as he lights a cigarette, taking a drag while running his hand down his bare chest and stomach, leaving the phone to float by itself at his ear. He can't look away from the mirror.

 

"Took a dip in Logea so I could cool off for a bit, went through a few love letters I got in the mail from some secret admirers--"

 

Liam pauses Adventure Time and sits up abruptly.

 

"You went swimming today?" He asks suddenly. Zayn makes an annoyed sound.

 

"Lima, it's rude to interrupt."

 

"I'm sorry, I thought you just said--"

 

"You know I can't fucking swim."

 

Liam's brow knits together

 

"But you just said you took a dip in Logea. As in the lake behind the school?"

 

There's a pause, Zayn briefly taking the cigarette from his mouth, throwing it out and bringing the lighter up to his tongue instead. He burns the tip thoroughly as he stares at himself until the end is totally charred. He keeps his blackened tongue sticking out, licking the inside if his mouth briefly then watching it heal a few seconds later.

 

“Are you still there?”

 

"I am a god," Zayn says finally, ignoring Liam's question totally. Liam squints.

 

“Um… okay?” He doesn’t know how to really respond to that.

 

“Have you been listening to Kanye West again?”

 

“Can you come over? I wanna show you something.” Zayn says.

 

The other line starts beeping. When Liam looks at it to see it's Harry, he tells Zayn to hold on for the other line.

 

"Ignore it." Zayn whines but, Liam says it'll just be a minute, rolling his eyes in annoyance as he clicks over. Zayn frowns.

 

‘ _Please leave him alone.’_

 

It's a soft murmur in the back of his head. He ignores it, looking down at his tented underpants, with raised eyebrows.

 

“Well, _hello_ there big guy.”

 

 

*

 

On the other line, Harry asks Liam if he can come over as well.

 

"What's happening?" Liam asks immediately. He just knew it had to be something wrong. Harry wouldn't call him at 1 a.m. for a laugh.

 

"How soon can you come over?" Harry asks. Liam is already getting out of bed.

 

"I can be there in like 5 minutes. Why?"

 

“I can't tell you on the phone. You have to see this.”

 

“Okay, I'll leave now.” He says. Harry agrees and they hang up.

 

“Zayn, I have t--”

 

"Quick question," Zayn says. Liam is getting really sick of being cut off. He waits for Zayn to go on anyways.

 

“ _What are you wearing?_ ”

 

Something about the sound of Zayn's voice makes goosebumps spread out all over his skin as he freezes.

 

“... _what?”_

 

On the other end, Zayn is touching himself on his bed now, watching his hand slowly massage down his pants in his mirror, the head of his penis peeking out over his underwear.

 

" _You should come over."_ He says his voice low and oozing something Liam wants to dive into and swims around in. It makes him think only one word.

 

_Sex_

 

It’s like a whisper, faintly echoing in the distance of his mind, caressing him… him as in his uninvited friend deciding to say hi in his pants. He can't seem to shake the feeling off of him as he closed his eyes, ignoring the sudden urge to touch himself.

 

“... why?”

 

Zayn's mouth falls open, pausing briefly as a small breath comes up too short, catching in his throat when his thumb rubs over the sensitive tip of his dick.

 

His eyes squeeze close as he gasps. This was _... new._

 

 _"Wow,"_ he whispers very quietly at the back of his throat.

 

The phone picks up every hitch and breath on the line so no matter how soft it is, it still goes directly into Liam's ear… and straight to his dick. The sound makes Liam go _cherry red_ , thinking Zayn can't be doing what he _thinks_ he’s doing right now.

 

 _“I wanna… show you something,_ ” he breathes.

 

Liam's pulse jumps as he almost hangs up the phone, hearing the distinct sound of skin moving against the skin in the background as Zayn breathes shakily. He totally sounds like he's in the middle of having sex while trying to talk.

 

“I have to go.” Liam’s suddenly rushed, actually hanging up before Zayn can say anything else with that _voice_. A voice that seemed like it could convince Liam to do whatever he tells him to. As soon as he does, that caressing feeling inside vanishes, leaving him flushed out.

 

He doesn't think about Zayn for the rest of the night. Or he tries not to. Not him swimming around somewhere today. Not kissing him. Not him _masturbating_. No Zayn at all.

 

Him not thinking about Zayn while he's driving to Harry's house almost makes him drive into a ditch when Zayn’s voice echoes in his head again.

 

_'You should come over.’_

 

He can't help wondering what Zayn was gonna… _show_ him.

 

‘ _Come over.’_

 

‘ _You should... cum'_

 

Liam shakes his head at that thought, briefly wondering when he got such a dirty mind. Zayn jerking off while on the phone was an absurd notion…... _absurdly hot._

 

_‘Oh god, what if he was!'_

 

Liam slams on his breaks, suddenly whipping his car around like a psycho and making a u-turn in the middle of the street when he realises he's going towards the direction of Zayn's house instead of Harry's.

 

He pulls over on the side of the road right after, unable to drive with the distraction in his pants, and pulls himself through the fastest impromptu wank session of his life, putting his sick, dirty mind to rest once and for all. Thinking about the end of that phone call makes finishing go pretty fast.

 

He gets to Harry's house in almost 20 minutes despite it being a 3-minute drive. There are a few police cars at his house. He's sitting outside on the curb when Liam pulls up.

 

“What the fuck took so long? You live right around the corner. You missed it.” Harry stands up when Liam approaches, shaking his head.

 

"Why are there police at your house?" Liam asks instead of answering that.

 

"Not mine. Tom's. That really was him in the woods behind the school. They said he was found dead with parts of his major organs _devoured_."

 

Liam's eyes bulge

 

"What?!"

 

"No one's even supposed to know about it yet but my dad just went over and talked to the police."

 

"Oh my god..." Liam covers his head. "This is insane!"

 

"Believe it or not, that's not even the worst part," Harry says something Liam did not want to hear.

 

"See the one in the all black suit?"

 

Liam squints, seeing him standing at the front door of their house, talking to Tom's dad.

 

"That's a private investigator."

 

Liam looks at Harry, confused.

 

"For what?"

 

"They think a _human_ did it. You know, like a cannibal. Possibly the same person as Niall. Animals usually go for the soft parts, like eyes but Tom’s entire throat, guts and his _heart_ were ripped to shreds. No kind of animal around here would do that.”

 

Liam sits down on a bench at the curb, unable to believe what he's hearing.

 

"They were both found with their own... sex jeez on them as well so whoever did it had sex with them right before. And the same parts of their bodies eaten, only unlike with Niall, they finished Tom off."

 

"I can't believe this is happening."

 

"They're hoping Niall wakes up from his coma." Harry continues "he's like the only witness right now."

 

Liam looks up from where he's sitting on the curb.

 

"Harry... this can't be a coincidence."

 

Harry tilts his head

 

"What can't?"

 

“Everything that's happened since last night! The fire, and everyone dying and just everything weird happening with the band and now a _cannibal?_ In what world is this normal? I-"

 

"Whoa whoa, slow down!" Harry kneels in front of Liam before he starts hyperventilating. He did have a habit of overreacting sometimes.

 

"Take a deep breath." Harry gently tells him. Liam closes his eyes and breathes in deeply.

 

"Exhale."

 

Liam does so, but his nerves don’t calm at all. He was probably gonna space out in a few hours, fall into a coma wide awake and disassociate for a while if he didn’t calm down.

 

"Now, what about the band?"

 

Liam looks at Harry cautiously before he sighs.

 

“It's… nothing. This is just a lot, that's all.” he decides with, unable to bring himself to tell Harry he thought the fire wasn't an accident and that the band might've had something to do with it. Harry was usually pretty open to believing any kind of conspiracy but, Liam had absolutely no proof that any of this was connected. It was just a feeling inside. It was probably nothing.

 

  
*

 

  
As the days marched on, Manningtree came back together again to grieve. The day news broke about Tom, everyone wasn't just sad anymore. They were also scared to leave the house now. His death was ruled as a homicide and a curfew was issued for the whole town because of the possibility of a serial cannibal being on the loose, already having struck twice in less than 24 hours.

 

There were daytime parties every weekend to make-up for the lack of night outings. The parties were more like gatherings for wakefulness.

 

It seemed like there was a million funerals every day. Liam went to every single one of them, even 6 in one day at one point. Harry tried to tell him it was bad for his mental health but, he couldn't stop himself. Everyone had a different way to process their grief. This was Liam's way.

 

Zayn's way was to not process it at all apparently because he wasn't grieving anything. He was so unbothered. Like he didn't care about what was happening to their town.

 

Liam wasn't oblivious. He knows Zayn isn't the nicest or most compassionate person in the world. A lot of people, if not everyone was intimidated and/or afraid of him… for good reason. His main friends were mean people like Louis and Perrie for a reason. They weren’t bad influences on him like how Liam pretends they are. He could be just as bad, or even worse than them on his own when he wanted to be.

 

The way he carried himself came off as narcissistic and blasé to most people and he’d easily make anyone feel like dirt if they got on his bad side… or just because he felt like it. Sometimes it seemed like he just hated people.

 

But he had a rare attractiveness about him that made anyone feel good just by being associated with him. When his eyes were on you, his attention made you feel like you were the most important person in the room. Even if you didn't like him, you’d still want him to like you and that was what made him so popular.

 

When it came to Liam, he wasn’t like that at all. Liam kind of had a theory about Zayn. Sometimes he thinks Zayn hates everyone because everyone seems to hate Liam a lot of the time. Even as kids he was always protective of him. If anyone crossed Liam or Liam’s friends (which is just Harry) and it got back to Zayn… let's just say you'd _hope_ it didn't get back to him.

 

He didn't treat anyone like he treated Liam and no one could ever figure out why. The charming popular hottie and the weird, insecure dork isn't a combination that’s supposed to work but it does for them. Or… it did anyways. After the fire, that changed.

 

Zayn really couldn't be bothered to have anything to do with Liam anymore. He barely saw him around unless he was flirting with someone in the hallway or musing over his appearance in a mirror or out somewhere with a boy in town.

 

He’d been barely paying attention to anything outside of himself anymore. Most people here could probably relate cause he's gorgeous but with the way Zayn was being, you'd think he'd never seen his own face before.

 

There was only one day Zayn wasn't being totally self-obsessed. He was at practice, off to the side distancing himself from everyone. It was the only day he showed up to practice and he didn't interact with anyone at all. He wouldn't even look at Liam, staring down into a small puddle of water by the stands pensively.

 

All the time Liam stopped spending with Zayn now suddenly went to his girlfriend, which actually didn't improve their relationship as much as he thought it would. Liam always thought they kind of clashed because she and Zayn didn't get along and he was always around when they were together. Now that that was changed, Liam was starting to realise they didn't really have that much in common at all.

 

It turns out he didn't really know Sophia that well. They'd only met a year ago. Most times it really did feel like he was just talking to a stranger still.

 

Whenever they were together, they always ran out of things to talk about. Or with things they did want to do, the other person was uninterested. Like Liam being into his comics and cartoons and superhero movies, which Sophia thought was immature. Or Sophia wanting to go out to daytime parties since hanging out at night was cancelled but, Liam wasn't the partying type at all.

 

"You guys need to just find some common interests," Harry tells him at lunch one day. Liam shakes his head.

  
"That's the thing! We don't have any."

 

"Well, what'd you guys do before?"

 

Liam thinks about it for a moment as he watches her across the room, eating and laughing with the cheerleaders.

 

"Most of the time, we just hung out during football and cheer practice. We never really spent a tonne of time alone with each other like this. It's… boring." He sighs picking over his food. "I miss how things used to be."

 

"Zayn," Ben says from next to Harry. Liam raises his eyebrows

 

"Huh?"

 

"You miss Zayn." Anthony clarifies for him but Liam snorts.

 

"How can I miss someone that's still here?"

 

“Is he here right now?” Harry gestures to the empty seat next to Liam at the table. He typically ate with them and filled their table of 7 but Zayn skipped so often now, they barely seen him in school anymore. So it's been just 6 for the last 3 weeks.

 

“He's not here today.” Liam airily dismisses Harry.

 

“And you don't know where he is?”

 

“Despite what you seem to think, we're not a married couple Haz.”

 

“You used to be.”

 

“Harry’s got a point mate, where is Zayn?” Cher chirps from Liam’s other side from where she’s feeding Joey a strawberry.

 

Harry shrugs.

 

“I would say just ask Liam but they’ve been settling their divorce recently so…”

 

Anthony snorts, muttering something in Italian that Harry agrees with, laughing as well. 

 

Ben tells them both to cut it out and leave Liam only, reaching across Harry to hit Anthony in the head with the thick book he's reading.

 

Liam doesn't speak Italian like them and he finds it annoying when they say stuff about him so he won't understand so he rolls his eyes and ignores them all, not even responding to Harry's ridiculousness, or _Anthony's_ , as he continues to stress eat. The food was always his comfort when he was feeling emotionally unstable which didn't help with his gut but it helped for his mind. It was just a distraction really.

 

"Oh, _come on._ You think I haven't noticed you don’t hang out anymore?" Harry says seriously.

 

"So?" Liam shrugs with his mouth full of bread.

 

"So... I know you’ve noticed he's different too. We’ve all noticed. Even Louis."

 

That piqued Liam's curiosity a little.

 

"Louis?" He mumbles.

 

Harry nods while the rest of the table talk around them.

 

"Yeah. He asked me about him yesterday. He said he hasn't heard from Zayn in weeks."

 

"So? What should he expect? They broke up months ago."

 

"Just because they broke up doesn't mean they stopped talking. They were _friends_ too y’know.”

 

Liam rolls his eyes again. He didn't really care that Zayn hasn't been talking to Louis. It actually made him feel a little better.

 

"Well good. I mean, after he cheated on him 33 thousand times, maybe he deserves getting the cold shoulder now."

 

Harry doesn't mention the fact that that number was so suspiciously specific.

 

“He hasn't been talking to Perrie either or any of the cheerleaders for that matter or the guys in philosophy club with us like Joey and Ben here... not even to mention me.” Harry names off a few more.

 

“Or me.” Cher chimes offhandedly.

 

“I’ll have to second that.” Anthony tosses out there and okay maybe that was really weird.

 

It’s a little more out of character, considering the fact that Perrie’s girlfriend of 10 years recently died and the cheerleaders meant the world to him. It wasn't like him at all to abandon his friends at such a dark time… or at all. Liam only shrugs, as if it’s not bothering him in the slightest.

 

“Maybe they got into a fight? Maybe you pissed him off? You know how distant he gets when he's angry.”

 

"Oh yeah?" Harry quirks an eyebrow "and what about you then, huh?”

 

Liam can't even take himself into consideration in all this.

 

“He kind of has a habit of not telling me when or why he's mad at me.”

 

“So when was the last time you talked to Zayn?" Cher asks.

 

"Last week," Liam says simply. It was like a 1-minute phone call, Liam just checking up on what the fuck he's been doing lately as he's basically fallen off the planet. He vaguely said he was too "busy" to talk for that long which was code for him to be hooking up with someone.

"Without you calling him first?" Harry adds. Liam thinks for a moment before frowning.

 

"What's your point, Harry?"

 

Zayn actually had called Liam once but he didn't answer was because it was in the middle of the night. After what happened 3 weeks ago when he answered a call from Zayn… yeah, he wasn't picking up the phone when he rang at 1 a.m. anymore.

 

"My point is, things are different now because Zayn's different. You miss the Zayn before he got all full of himself after sleeping with the now pretty famous Eggsy Miller. And that's okay. I miss him too but, people change. They change and grow apart. I think the universe has a way of--"

 

"Wait, what did you just say?" Liam interrupts before he goes off on one of his rants about positivity and life lessons.

 

"Uh... which part?"

 

Liam thinks for a moment, zoning out.

 

"Liam?" Harry tries to bring him back but, he's lost Liam, now deep in thought before he's suddenly standing up.

 

"I have to do something." He murmurs, getting up from the table, ignoring Harry asking him where he was going.

 

Harry was right. Zayn changed after he left with High Tide. Liam never found out what happened that night. Zayn was so gone already right before the fire, then appearing in Liam's house, later on, looking like he was straight out of the grave... Liam still isn't even sure if that was real. But he feels deep down that something awful had to have happened, more than just the fire. The one time Liam came close to asking about it, Zayn totally evaded the question. This time, Liam was gonna be more specific and make sure he gets a direct answer.

 

On his way out of the lunch room, he bumps into Perrie, whose eyes are red and puffy. He utters a brief sorry but pauses when he sees that she's been crying.

 

"Perrie," Liam stops, turning back around.

 

"What's wrong?”

 

Perrie wipes her eyes, shaking her head.

 

"It's none of _yours_." She says sharply.

 

Liam nods regretfully, forgetting he's not supposed to talk to her. She's holding an obituary in her hand and it occurs to Liam that the last funeral he had to go to was today. Jade's funeral.

 

"I'll see you later if you want to talk about it," Liam says as he backs away. Perrie looks bemused.

 

"Later?"

 

"At the funeral." He explains.

 

“You're going right?"

 

Perrie looks down at the brochure, realising what Liam is talking about before her entire face crumbles, breaking down completely as she covers her mouth shaking her head.

 

"No... I'm not." She gasps, backing away "I'm sorry. I... I just can't."

 

She starts sobbing hard, dashing away to get to the girl's room. Liam stands there with wide eyes, not having a clue what just happened.

 

"Don't worry about her, she's just a bit… _hormonal_." Eleanor Calder says, standing nearby in her shades and sun hat as she smokes a cigarette despite them being indoors. Liam looks at her, confused.

 

"Do you know why she's not going to the funeral?"

 

Eleanor nods, coming to stand in front of Liam so she can keep her voice low. She was kind of the gossip queen of this school. Anything at all happens you wanna know? Just go to Eleanor and she'll tell you all the details.

 

“Everyone will know soon so you might as well hear it from me first.” She tells him leaning her sunglasses down a bit. Liam nods slowly.

 

"Remember that rumour about Perrie cheating on Jade a few months ago?"

 

Liam nods.

 

"Well, as it turns out, Perrie really was cheating on Jade. With Louis Tomlinson."

 

Liam's jaw drops.

 

_"What?"_

 

"Yeah. Louis totally turned her out. So while Perrie was cheating on Jade, Louis was cheating on Zayn and it went on for a while until Zayn walked in on them one day," she continues.

 

"Apparently, Zayn already knew about it the whole time and he didn't care. Zayn was more pissed at them for doing it behind Jade's back more than anything because she was so sweet, y'know? She didn't deserve to be lie to every day. But they promised they were gonna tell her."

  
"With Zayn out of the picture, Perrie and Louis still continue on with their affair behind Jade's back. She said she was planning on leaving her soon. Like, when the timing was right but she died and Perrie felt really guilty about everything. She ended up just breaking it off with Louis. You know Zayn was closer to Jade than Perrie. She said they haven't spoken since the fire. Just now, Perrie called Zayn to ask if he was going to the funeral with the rest of the cheerleaders but, she said he totally lashed out, calling her all kinds of cruel things and telling her how much she never deserved forgiveness or Jade before hanging up on her."

 

All of this had been going on and Zayn somehow kept it a secret. It was just like him to be more upset that Perrie cheated on Jade than Louis cheating on him. No wonder he hasn't been talking to his friends. Liam didn’t understand popular people. All they do is sleep with each other and stab each other in the back.

 

Perrie cheating wasn't shocking at all. But Perrie cheating with _Louis_ of all people? At this point, anything out of the ordinary anyone does just shouldn't shock him anymore.

 

Liam thanks, Eleanor and goes on to find a quiet place so he can try to call Zayn, who hadn't come to school today. He really needed to talk to him but, he never answers the phone or even opens his texts.

 

Later on, Liam goes to his last funeral, hopefully, the last one for a very long time. It's fortunately been 3 whole weeks without a report of an attack of any kind but, Liam wasn't letting his guard down. The killer still hadn't been caught.

 

Niall even woke up this week but, he didn't remember anything after the fire. Harry's been visiting him in the hospital almost every day. Liam went a few times but… he still felt a little awkward around him. He was a really nice guy and all but they weren't really friends friends despite growing up together. Niall was only nice to him because he's friends with Harry and Zayn. Just like the people at their lunch table. They were more like mutuals if anything.

 

When Liam gets to the memorial service, he was kind of hoping Perrie would've changed her mind about coming but, she didn't. The rest of the cheerleaders did, though. Including Zayn, in a whole suit and everything, with a little pink and white flower in his jacket pocket and his hair pushed up in a quiff and laid down at the back.

 

When he sees Liam, he gives him a small but sad smile. Liam doesn't know why he's so surprised to see him here. Even surprised that he acknowledged him. It was actually relieving. Like, maybe Zayn hasn't totally changed.

 

Later on, Liam hugs Sophia goodbye when she leaves early with Liam’s teammate Andy and a few other cheerleaders.

 

When the time comes to lower the coffin, Zayn stands right next to Liam. It was comforting, just feeling his presence there even if they weren't saying anything. It starts to rain a few minutes in, as Liam anticipated. He unfolds his umbrella and lets Zayn stand underneath it with him.

 

The dark sky rumbled with thunder, raising the hair on the back of his neck. He thinks back to when they were younger whenever it rained like this when they'd bury themselves under mountains of covers and trap themselves in their own little world with nothing but a few flashlights and each other. Zayn was always so afraid of the thunder without Liam there. He briefly wonders if some little part of him still is.

 

Zayn's hand immediately grips Liam's at his side when another loud clap of thunder startles him, squeezing tightly as he intertwined their fingers. Liam looks down at it. With them like this, their tattoos would be aligning perfectly inside.

 

"I'm really gonna miss her." Zayn sniffs, wiping a tear from his eye. So was Liam. Liam rubs his thumb over his hand so Zayn knows he's there too.

 

Despite the gloomy circumstances, that moment was the most normal things have felt since all this started.

 

  
*

 

  
After the funeral, Zayn rides back home with Liam instead of the rest of the girls. He was so quiet the whole ride, holding his knuckles under his nose as he stared out the window. Liam could just tell he was on the verge of tears. He didn't want to think about Zayn crying alone in his room. He goes straight home instead of dropping Zayn off, letting him come inside and lay in Liam's bed.

 

"Do you want tea or anything?"

 

Zayn nods from where he's curled up on Liam's bed after changing into a pair of sweats that were too small for Liam and a shirt that's too big for Zayn while his clothes are in the dryer.

 

Zayn liked his tea black and decaffeinated, which Liam thinks totally miss purposes tea, not to mention that it also tastes absolutely disgusting that way but, he makes his the same anyways.

 

When he comes back upstairs, he gives Zayn his cup and they both sit in silence on the bed, watching the sky light up and rain pelt Liam's window, getting harder and harder. Liam can see Zayn's hand shaking as he holds his cup, not even drinking any of it. He jumps when a clap of thunder shakes the room. Liam snorts, shaking his head.

 

"What?"

 

"17 years old and you're still afraid of thunder." Liam teases him. Teasing Zayn was the funniest way to irritate him.

 

" _Almost 18_. And I'm not scared." Zayn grumbles.

 

“This thunder is scared of me.”

 

Liam snorts again. That was always Zayn's response when he didn’t have a real comeback.

 

"You're shaking in your dirty little boots."

 

Zayn makes a face at him, offended that he'd dare insult Zayn's hygiene. He stands up in front of the window, way too close for lightning.

 

"Does this look scared to you?" Zayn challenges. The smile wipes off of Liam's face.

 

"Zayn..."

 

Zayn takes it a step further, opening the window.

 

"Okay, I get it. You're not scared of thunder. You can cut it out now."

 

Zayn proceeds to stick his head all the way out, into the rain, holding it up to the sky with his eye closed and tongue sticking out, doing the absolute most just to prove a silly point.

 

The next moment happens in slow motion for Liam. He swears he hears a low buzz in the back of his head, like a charging power line. The hairs on his neck and head all stand up at the same time as he watches, in horror, a white light flashing in the window.

 

"ZAYN-"

 

Liam lunges towards him, grabbing onto the back of his shirt and yanking him back inside just a moment too late. The whole room lights up, white and blinding as he falls back on his bed, Zayn falling back on top of him. All he can hear is a sharp ripping in the air and the rank, the all too familiar smell of burning flesh.

 

Within seconds, it's dark again and Zayn isn't moving. His shirt is smoking. Liam panics, frantically trying to turn on a light so he can see but, the power is knocked out.

 

" _Oh my God_ , please no, _please_ \--"

 

He pushes Zayn's limp body on the bed and lays his head against his chest, trying to feel if his heart was beating. It's not.

 

"Fuck, _FUCK_ no, no, no, no, _no_ ,"

 

Liam doesn't know CPR properly but he knows how he sees it done on TV.

 

He starts doing chest compressions, pumping 3 times then lifting Zayn's chin to blow air into his mouth to get his heart beating again. It's still not. He repeats this about 5 times before he gives up, figuring he's doing it all wrong. He picks up his phone and shakily dials for an ambulance but, his phone is plucked from his hands from behind.

 

"Boo." Zayn grins.

 

Liam goes white as he gapes at him now sitting up, perfectly fine, at a loss for words. He feels like he's looking at a ghost.

  
"If you wanted to kiss me again, you could've just asked."

 

"Zayn..." he gasps

 

"You know, I don't think I've ever heard you say fuck before. You should do that more often. It's kinda really hot.”

 

Liam stands up, feeling like his heart jump crazy, running his hand through his hair that's curled up from the moisture.

 

"You just got struck by lightning--"

 

"No, I didn't," Zayn says, tilting his head sideways like a cat.

 

"Yes! Yes, you did! I SAW it! I could smell your--your _skin_ burning! There's a hole in my shirt where it went into your fucking _chest_!"

 

"There it is again," Zayn laughs playfully, biting his lip. Liam gets on his knees and grabs Zayn's wrists. He could faintly feel his pulse again.

 

"Z, I'm s-s-serious, your heart w-wasn't b--beating--"

 

Liam losses his breath as he gasps out the words, letting go of Zayn as he clutched his own chest, feeling his breath coming out in spurts, shaking as he backs away from Zayn. Zayn's smile instantly disappears, suddenly struck with fear for Liam.

 

"Lima, what's wrong?!" He kneels in front of Liam, holding his head between his hands as he looked him in the eye. Liam continues to lose his breath, trying to breathe too fast for himself to calm down, hyperventilating. This was more than overreacting. He actually can't breathe.

 

"You... w-were... dead!" He gasps.

 

Zayn shushes him, holding his hands tightly, panicking himself as Liam freaks out. He hadn't had an asthma attack since he was a child. He didn't have an inhaler anymore.

 

"Liam, look at me, I’m not dead! You have to slow your breathing or you’re gonna pass out!"

 

"I-- can't... I _can't_... you _died_! Your h-heart st-st-stopped I--"

 

"I know, I know! It did. It's okay bean.” He says gently as his eyes dart between Liam’s.

 

“I'm okay now, just hold your breath for me. I'm not gonna die. I'm _never_ gonna die."

 

Liam shakes his head rapidly, looking at the ground.

 

"Wha-what do you m-mean?"

 

 _“Liam look at me,_ ” Zayn holds his face back up, wiping his tears and he gasps.

 

Usually looking at Zayn like this calmed him down but he can’t stop his manic breathing. His eyes are black instead of brown. All the brown is all pupil. It’s not the lighting or Liam’s eyesight. Liam’s lost his mind. He can’t handle hallucinating like this right now. He just can’t.

 

 _“Hold your breath._ ”

 

“I… _can’t_.”

 

Zayn kisses him then, the electricity still charged in the air shocking their lips. Liam inhales deeply holding Zayn against him as he kisses him back, melting into him. It totally takes his breath away.

 

Zayn's heart is pounding against Liam's chest now, definitely alive. Liam’s hand goes to grip the bed behind Zayn’s head and he pushes up against him as an intense sensation of ravenous lust overcomes him, hiking Zayn's knee up behind him to go further around his waist. He pulls away if only to catch his breath, kissing down Zayn's neck and sliding his hand from gripping under Zayn's knee to his thigh, until he's groping him through the thin fabric of his sweats. Zayn's whimpers, forcing himself to stop kissing Liam.

 

“Lima,” he gasps, weakly pushing back his chest. Liam's other hand moves into Zayn's soaked long hair, tugging hard at the back so Zayn's head nods back, exposing more of his neck for Liam to kiss up, all the way to his ear. Zayn's chest heaves, struggling to hold himself back and not just devour Liam right there on his bedroom floor… literally.

 

“You have to... _fuck_ … you have to stop touching me now.” Zayn pants, his heart pounding harder as he starts to salivate, fighting against his body being taken over. But Liam keeps rubbing his dick through the thin sweats, teeth scraping from Zayn's neck down his collar bone.

 

A ripple goes through Zayn's body.

 

“ _Lux please... don't,_ ” he gasps. But it's too late. Zayn can't hold back any longer.

 

He pushes Liam, hard, back onto the floor with the force of a semi truck, making him hit the ground with a loud thud. It knocks the wind out of Liam as a burst of stars explode behind his eyelids after the ground rushes up to meet the back of his head.

 

He crawls on top of Liam right after, like a predator stalking towards its prey then, his eyes totally black. Even the white this time.

 

He sits on Liam's hard-on, wrapping his hands around his throat and biting his lip as he kissed him, reaching one hand down his pants to massage over Liam’s dick, rubbing up and down his length. Liam groans, leaning up to try to kiss Zayn again but, Zayn keeps him pinned down, feeling impossibly heavy on top of him, continuing to kiss him slowly with his tongue curling up in his mouth while jerking him off.

 

But Zayn is so heavy, he doesn't even realise he's crushing him as Liam struggles to breathe again. This time it's not an asthma attack. Zayn's weight in suffocating him and his face is going red. But the air tightly leaving his lungs is overpowered by the growing heat in his gut. Just as his last breath is on the verge of coming out, his orgasm emerges from his body from somewhere he can't even feel. He can't feel anything at all right now. It's so intense due to the fact that he's suffocating with Zayn's weight and also the fact that he's still choking Liam, cutting off oxygen to his heart and brain. It feels like he's actually trying to kill him.

 

Another loud clap of thunder startles Zayn, instantly snapping him out of it when he realises what he's doing.

 

His weight goes from being too much to non-existent, practically floating off of Liam. Along with the crushing weight also goes Liam's sudden urge to fuck his brains out, like a hazy fog leaving his mind.

 

He gasps for air as he lays on the ground with his chest heaving, slowly sitting back up and gagging for his breath. Zayn is curling into himself his back is to Liam, on his bed somehow already. Liam breathes out shakily after coughing, trying to figure out what the fuck just happened to his body. It felt almost like disassociating as if he was watching them from the outside almost rather than actually experiencing it. The only difference being there was absolutely no sense of control over what he was doing.

 

“Zayn…”

 

“You were having a panic attack,” Zayn mutters. Liam narrows his eyes, confused.

 

“What?”

 

Zayn turns around sharply, his eyes flickering from completely black back to brown, making Liam gasp.

 

“You were having a panic attack! You weren't breathing. When you kiss someone, you hold your breath so I kissed you.”

 

Liam laughs a little, looking down at his damp crotch.

 

“You did way more than kiss me.”

 

His neck aches horribly as he rubs it, as does his back. And he might have a knot at the back of his head. But at least he can breathe again so Zayn’s mission is accomplished?

 

Obviously, Zayn wasn't acting alone but, Liam felt like he couldn't even control his own body. It was a weird and painful feeling, being strangled like that but… he sort of liked it.

 

“I _know_ I did way more than kiss you and we almost killed you.” Zayn angrily grumbled, standing up and fumbling to put his shoes on.

 

"I'm sorry, I never should've come here."

 

Liam springs to his feet, reaching out to stop him.

 

“Wait! Don't leave _please_.” He croaks out of his tight throat.

 

“Don't touch me!” Zayn shouts, pulling away like he's poisonous. Liam stops, putting his hands up so Zayn can see he isn't.

 

"I'm not! I'm not." He assures him "Just… don't leave. Please."

 

Zayn rubs his hand over his face roughly, shaking his head. Liam backs away, back to his bed, trying not to give Zayn any indication that he was freaked out at all. Surprisingly, he wasn't.

 

“Look, if I'm really that irresistible, I'll stay over here and you can stay right there so we don't touch each other.” Liam bargains. Zayn’s head falls as he chuckles, shaking his head then he looks back at Liam.

 

“So you think you're the one making cheeky remarks now?”

 

“Well, one of us has to.” Liam shrugs. He doesn’t want to scare Zayn away even though he’s the one that was borderline assaulted. But Zayn still looks like he's ready to flee his house until some more thunder rumbles, making him jump despite himself which makes Liam smile. He wasn't going anywhere. Not with it thundering like this.

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” He hisses under his breath, kicking off his shoes.

 

“Just until it stops raining.”

 

Liam nods with a small grin.

 

“If you don't wipe that smug grin off your face I'm gonna rip out your throat.” He says as he strolls back over to the window and closes it. It starts to resonate finally as Liam watches him carefully close the window.

 

He just made out with Zayn. He just made out with Zayn and touched his dick and put his mouth all over his neck and Zayn actually made a mess in his pants.

 

So… that really just happened. Also, Zayn got hit with a fucking bolt of lightening and almost died. Or… did die? His heart stopped, that was for sure. Liam heard everything he said before they started… _ravishing_ each other.

 

“What did you mean when you said, you’re never gonna...”

 

Zayn turns back around with raised eyebrows as Liam starts to ask a question. But, he stops, rubbing his knees as he sighs. He seriously didn’t want Zayn to leave. He’s barely seen him in weeks so if that meant his questions had to go unanswered, that was perfectly fine.

 

“You know what, we don't have to talk about it.” he decides, clasping his hands together. Zayn crosses his arms, seemingly amused.

 

"So you got hit with a bolt of lightning. So we kind of made out or whatever. Some things just can't be explained and… I'm okay with that. Like Harry always says. This universe does things we don't understand in a grander scheme of things whether by divine reasoning or not. What happens, happens."

 

"Are you seriously quoting Harry the alien star child right now?" Zayn smiles. Liam shrugs.

 

“Whatever. I'm just saying we don't have to talk about it if you… don’t want to.”

 

Zayn shakes his head and walks back over to the bed, gesturing for Liam to move over, waiting for a moment for him to scoot over some more to ensure that he under no circumstances touches him. Liam laughs a little, asking if it's really that serious.

 

“ _Dead_ serious.” Zayn sighs as he lays back on the bed, even putting a pillow in between them, turning on his side so they lay face to face, half an arm's distance away from each other.

 

"I can tell you whatever you want to know as long as you don't break my rule," he says, laying the side his head on his hand, tapping the pillow to indicate that he's not allowed to cross it. Liam does the same.

 

“Whatever?”

 

Zayn nods.

 

“20 questions.”

 

Okay. They were doing this.

 

"My rule is no running off and _disappearing_ for 3 weeks," Liam says. Zayn smiles a little, closing his eyes as he nods.

 

“Deal.”

 

He sticks out his hand across the pillow for Liam to shake, which Liam complies with but Zayn moves his hand away at the last moment.

 

“No touching Zayn is my only rule and you've already failed spectacularly.” he tuts, disappointed. Liam rolls his eyes, reaching his hand over anyways, like he's about to touch Zayn's face but, he doesn't. Zayn tenses as Liam’s hand hovers over his cheek, tracing around his face.

 

“I’m not touching you am I?”

 

Zayn narrows his eyes at him. They used to do this when they were kids to annoy each other. That little game of “I’m not touching you”.

 

“Is that your first question?”

 

Liam laughs, shaking his head.

 

“Why can't I touch Zayn?” he asks as his hand slowly hovers down to his shoulders, and to his hand, then back up his arm. Zayn inhales briefly.

 

“Because he doesn't know how to control his demon powers and a scary monster will try to take over his body and seduce you.”

 

Liam snorts, nodding along.

 

"That's nice," he says, sarcastic. Zayn shrugs.

 

“Whatever. Ok my turn.” he grins. Liam continues his tracing over Zayn's body as he goes on.

 

“Is Liam Payne still a virgin?”

 

Liam nearly chokes at the question, coughing into his hand.

 

“Ex-cuse me?” he squeaks. Zayn smacks his lips.

 

“Oh come on. Its no fun if we only ask boring questions.”

 

Liam bites his lip, staring Zayn down for a second.

 

“Describe a virgin.”

 

“Let’s see… I think I only know of one…” Zayn’s eyes flutter upwards as he thinks.

 

"He's got gentle white feathery wings growing out of his back that he uses to float around in the clouds like the little sun he is. There are dreams in his eyes that cloud his vision so he has to see the world through shiny lenses in a pink frame. His wears his heart exposed to the world on a mark on his throat," Zayn starts to describe his ridiculous idea of Liam.

 

Liam laughs.

 

“I mean _actions_.”

 

“Handjob’s don’t count. Oral can.”

 

Liam rolls his eyes. Obviously, he just wanted to know if Sophia has ever given him a blowjob.

  
“Yes, Liam is still a virgin.”

 

Zayn grins wide, poking Liam in his stomach.

 

“Aw, look at you. Still a precious bean. ‘m proud of you.”

 

Liam huffs indignantly.

 

"Well, you won't be proud for long. I think I'm quite bored of being the only virgin angel in the world," he says. Zayn grimaces.

 

“Okay, next question.”

 

He chuckles as Zayn tiptoes his fingers up Liam's shirt.

 

“What did you mean when you said you’re never gonna die?” he asks tentatively. Zayn didn't look apprehensive about the question at all, fluttering his eyelashes as he watches his own fingers playing on Liam's stomach. He guesses it doesn't count as touching if there's no skin to skin contact.

 

“I meant that if I one day get struck by lightening I’d probably continue on with my day just fine.”

 

Liam decides he believes him. Deep down, he's always known that Zayn would never die. Even when he’s 6 feet under, Zayn would always be alive somehow. He was the invincible one.

 

When they were little, they used to pretend to be superheroes and run around with their underwear over Zayn’s older sister's tights. It was the most embarrassing thing in the world and they'd both deny it ever happened even if their mothers had pictures but, they thought they really were superheroes at one point. And that they were invincible.

 

When Liam accidently fell out of Zayn's bedroom window and broke his leg, he realised he, in fact, wasn't invincible. It made him terrified of heights ever since. But Zayn was still invincible, because he became his legs, pulling Liam around everywhere in a buggy throughout the entire time he had to wear his cast.

 

“My turn.” Zayn moves on, smiling.

 

“Would you do anything for me?”

 

Liam thinks about that for a moment, giving it serious consideration. Anything was very broad… if it was someone else that was asking.

 

“Yeah… I would.” He says, almost more to himself than to Zayn.

 

“I'd do anything for you.” he repeats, then adds “Would you for me?”

 

"Of course," Zayn says immediately, looking at Liam like that was a dumb question as he pokes him in his stomach when he answers, making Liam giggle.

 

He pauses for a moment before asking his next question.

 

“ _Where have you been_?” he finally asks. Zayn looks down a little, his brows scrunching up.

 

“Well… I've been doing the opposite of finding myself I guess. Having a lot of sex and staying away from my reflection.”

 

He looks back at Liam's confused expression and sighs.

 

“I know I've been acting really weird and I don't mean to freak you out. I don't actually know where I've been if I'm being 100% real with you but I'm here now so let's just not even focus on the weird shit just yet, yeah?”

 

Liam nods along with him, a little relieved that this hasn't all been a figment of his imagination. But… the fact still remained that something weird really was going on and he didn’t want Zayn to feel like he was lost. Liam knows far too well his that feels. He trusts Zayn enough to not worry about it right now. Everything was okay right now.

 

Zayn continues with his turn.

 

“If I tell you to stay away from me because I might… _hurt_ you again, will you promise me you will?”

 

Liam didn't even have to think about that. He shakes his head.

 

“No. Never.”

 

Zayn purses his lips

 

“Dumb boy.”

 

“I don't believe you would ever willingly hurt me.”

 

“Things don't work based off what you want to believe.” Zayn says, seriously “If I ever tell you to stay away from me, promise me you'll do it. Not just for you. For me too.”

 

Liam frowns, his face scrunching up in the process

 

“Are we talking physically here because I know you'd never hurt me.”

 

“Don’t play oblivious with me right now. I know you remember me hurting you a few weeks ago.”

 

Liam shrugs nonchalantly even though a ghostly chill spreads across his skin. So… Liam really hasn't been hallucinating this whole time since Zayn is aware of what happened too, the night of the fire. He’s the only other person that could assure Liam it was real.

 

“You weren't trying to kill me were you?” he asks jokingly.

 

“Did I not almost kill you just 10 minutes ago?”

 

“Answering a question with a question?”

 

“Lima…” Zayn sighs, tilting his head “I'm serious.”

 

“That wasn't totally your fault. I thought you were dead for a few minutes, of course I was gonna panic.”

 

"I'm _talking_ about what happened after. We were crushing you and you didn't even notice. You _couldn't_ notice." he uses we again and Liam realises when he says we, he didn't mean him and Liam.

  
"Okay, so what happened?" Liam asks, even though he'd rather ask who "we" is.

  
He knew he was suffocating with Zayn sitting on him, even more so with his hands clasped around his throat but, it was like his body's need for Zayn was overriding his instinct to survive. He looks at Zayn's hand resting on his stomach and experimentally weaves his fingers through his. Nothing happens.

 

“You were touching me! I mean, no… I was touching you. I'm still trying to control myself and I've managed to all day until now. But that’s my own fault for acting like a dick and playing with lightning and I shouldn’t have scared you. I wouldn't have had to do that to you otherwise but I'm still working on controlling it better,”

 

“Zayn.” He’s talking so fast now, Liam can barely understand what he’s saying.

 

“It’s just harder for me to control myself when I'm like this with you because, you’re _you_ and I don't want that to gross you out or give you a heart attack or fucking suffocate you or anything, me touching you like that and I really can’t apologize enough for it-”

 

_“Zayn.”_

 

_“What?”_

 

Liam smiles when he finally stops ranting, looking down, in between them at their interlocked fingers.

 

“You’re touching me right now and I don't see either of us attacking each other.”

 

Zayn immediately takes his hand back with wide eyes.

 

“Liam, I said you can’t--”

 

 _“Touch you?”_ Liam finishes for him, brushing his fingers over his cheek. The contact of it sparks a little but, Liam supposes that's just from the electricity still buzzing in the air. And okay, maybe having skin contact with Zayn does send a faint ripple through him… but that was normal.

 

For a moment, nothing happens as they stare at each other, unblinking. Zayn's gaze is so intense, though… it's like it's reaching deep down inside of Liam, beckoning him to come closer, wrapping around him until it actually is pulling him closer. Even as he watches Zayn's pupils dilate slowly, overtaking the brown first, then the white until it's all black, he still leans in closer, unfazed.

 

Right before he kisses him, Zayn grasps his hand and pushes it away from him, back to the other side of the pillow. The moment they break contact, Liam gasps, breathing out again normally and clutching his hand in awe as he watches Zayn’s eyes shrink back down to normal.

 

“Whoa…”

 

Zayn closes his eyes and sighs.

 

“I told you--”

 

“Yeah I know. I’m sorry,” Liam rushes. “That’s just… amazing.”

 

Zayn nods his head from side to side

 

“Not really… I think fucking weird is the more appropriate term.”

 

“But, what about before, at the funeral? How could I touch you then?”

 

Zayn rubs his jaw for a moment, tracing his jawline with his index finger as he thinks.

 

"It's like in levels. Sometimes, I'm myself and fine, like at the funeral. Thinking straight and behaving like a totally normal person. Then I'm like _this_. Seemingly normal but fucked up on the inside. Something else living and waiting just underneath my skin. It prevents me from being hurt. I was fine until the… uh, lightning. Then other times at the very worst, it's like I disappear into myself completely and I sort of blackout. I'll blink and a whole week or two will go by with me having absolutely no control over anything I say or do like I'm watching myself from the inside." He sighs, frowning. "I'm sorry I've been so… not myself lately. I'm getting better at controlling it, I swear. I just... think I might get help for it."

 

Liam nods. What he's describing was exactly what disassociating felt like… even the something living under his skin thing. He feels like that explains a lot but also… still, has things spinning off its axis.

 

On one hand, he’s beyond relieved to have Zayn back, somewhat. He was scared that they were growing apart or something. He’s terrified of that ever happening.

 

On the other hand, there's still the implication that Zayn's not all the way there. Liam knows what it feels like to feel detached from his body for a long period of time. But… Zayn's pupils dilate to the point of taking up his whole eye and he turns into someone else. Liam's never had it that bad. He's only experienced depersonalization. But Zayn is having episodes dissociative identity. Very intensely at that. He's sure there's a perfectly scientific explanation for his eyes doing that.

 

So the question of who the hell he’s been talking to for the last 3 weeks whenever _Zayn_ disappeared arises eerily. If even Zayn didn’t know the answer to that… then they were on this plane without a pilot.

 

“So… when your eyes were… black-”

 

“It's still me… sometimes. But… I'm just not _alone_.”

 

“And…. you're not alone _right now?”_

 

Zayn’s pupil dilates again, taking over the brown on command, as he shakes his head. They go back to normal right after. Liam swallows a lump in his throat.

 

"Something else underneath your skin," Liam repeats his words. Zayn nods.

 

“Do you hear a voice in your head?” Liam asks. Zayn hesitates but nods again.

 

"And it makes you feel and act violently?"

 

Zayn doesn't say anything. Obviously, it did based off what happens when his eyes are black.

 

“I'm not gonna judge you,” Liam quickly clarifies.

 

“I understand you're going through something really scary.”

 

“Yeah, I know it's confusing but, like I said, I'm gonna get it fixed so you don't have to worry about it.”

 

It wasn't confusing at all. It's times like this when he wants to tell Zayn about his own personality disorder so he won't think he's alone in this or like a freak.

 

"I can come with you… you know, to get help." Liam offers. He knew a lot of doctors who specialised with this but, Zayn shakes his head.

 

“You can't come where I have to go.”

 

“Where?”

 

Zayn bites his lip as he looks down at the pillow in between them, obviously not able to answer that one which Liam understands. He didn’t like to advertise whenever he had to go to a doctor either.

 

Outside, the rain has finally stopped, the sky clearing to reveal the bright, waxing gibbous. It'd be a full moon in a week.

 

“If I disappear again… like before when I'm totally not myself or if my eyes look weird promise me you’ll stay away from me. Even if I approach you.” he says instead.

 

Zayn looks back into Liam’s eyes, something in them seeming like he’s almost begging Liam to agree. Liam nods slowly.

 

“Okay.” He whispers, honestly meaning it. “I promise.”

 

A wave of relief washes over Zayn then, finally relaxing again.

 

"Also another thing," Zayn says, his face scrunching up

 

“Get a new fucking inhaler you scared the shit out of me you prick.”

 

Liam laughs

 

“Says the boy who pretended to _die_ in my arms.”

 

“We're even. No more dying.”

 

"Next question," Liam says, and Zayn nods, smiling again

 

“What's your favourite colour?” Zayn derails the morbid track their questions have taken to lighten things back up. Liam narrows his eyes at him.

 

“You already know that.”

 

“What is. Your favourite. Colour?” he repeats, slower this time.

 

“Guess.”

 

Zayn pretends to think for a moment before he reaches into his pocket a pulls out the flower he had in his suit jacket. It's white on the outside with another, smaller one blooming in the centre. It's a daffodil except instead of yellow in the middle, it's pink.

 

“Pink like this cute little flower?” he asks, twirling it around his nose. Liam grins, carefully plucking it out of his fingers and tucking it behind Zayn's ear.

 

"No… like your lips." Liam doesn't know where the hell that bold comment came from but, he's glad he said it out loud instead of in his head.

 

He makes Zayn blush. Like really blush. The soft pink blossoms across his face, his skin almost appearing fuchsia in the moonlight and it's the most incredibly beautiful thing Liam has ever seen. But, that's not anything out of the ordinary.

 

"Is that… why?" he asks, biting his lips so they're not quite visible for Liam to look at anymore. This bashful Zayn was something Liam never knew he could bring out. He really fucking likes it.

 

“You asked the last question.” Liam says instead, then adds so Zayn won't be all smug “And no. That's not why.”

 

Zayn actually pouts, exaggeratedly

 

“How dare you say the world doesn't revolve around me.”

 

Liam laughs briefly, wanting to tell him his world does revolve around him. He stares at Zayn closely for a moment, studying him.

 

“Stop looking at me like that.” Zayn hides half of his face with the cover, which Liam pulls away as he smiles. Shy Zayn was terribly adorable.

 

“How am I looking at you?” Liam asks his question.

 

“I dunno…” Zayn shrugs, biting back a small smile of his own.

 

“Like you’re looking into a mirror or something.”

 

"Maybe I am." Liam pointedly stares directly into his eyes now, squinting his. Zayn's eyes darken a little, his pupil dilating until the brown looks almost black again. Liam doesn't think he realises he's doing it again. It's a haunting sight but… he can't look away from them.

 

After a small pause, Zayn breaks the stare as his eyes go back to normal, blinking.

 

There was something about eye contact that went into intimacy on an almost uncomfortable level with anyone, like staring at someone naked. Strangers, friends, even looking into your own eyes. They were supposed to be windows to the soul but, when you’re already well acquainted with that soul, it almost becomes like you actually are staring into a mirror.

 

“Do you know why I fell in love with you?” Zayn says after a moment, looking down at the pillow separating them.

 

Liam shakes his head, his insides flipping over. It wasn't out of the ordinary for them to say stuff like this. It was a very pure attribute of their relationship. They'd decided years ago that they've always been in love because they didn't like anyone else more than each other. Even before they met.

 

Zayn looks back up at him. Liam's heart flutters when he gazes at him again. He’s so radiant. Like even without the moonlight, maybe he’d still be glowing.

 

 _“The first time I saw you, I could see the glimmer of myself in your shiny lenses._ ” he utters.

 

Liam blinks a few times for a moment as what he said fully registers until he realises that's possibly the most narcissistic thing Zayn's ever said to him. He's basically saying he fell in love with his reflection… not Liam.

 

“ _Oh my god I can't stand you_.” Liam shakes his head as Zayn starts to laugh.

 

Liam takes his glasses off and puts them on his night stand, then smothers Zayn’s laughing face with his pillow when he complains about not being able to look at himself anymore.

 

“You're so vain.” Liam tuts jokingly. Zayn grabs the pillow away as he sighs.

 

“I know. But I’ve been trying to abstain from mirrors so, there’s a baby step.”

 

“Like me?” Liam snorts a little, but Zayn frowns.

 

“You’re avoiding mirrors again?”

 

Liam nods. Mirrors triggered his detachment sometimes. He’d look at himself and the next thing he knows, one glance turns into 1 hour of spaced out oblivion. 

 

When you look into one and don’t recognize your own face as yours, things get very weird very quickly for Liam. Sometimes Liam hallucinated in them, seeing someone else entirely. Like his dad. His mum always says he's the spitting image of his father and Liam hated that. Sometimes he'd look in the mirror and just feel like he was the one in the mirror and the person on the other side was the one that was free. He doesn't tell anyone about that. Not even his therapist. So he stayed away from his reflection usually.

 

Zayn knows that Liam zones out a lot but Liam’s never told him the full truth behind it. About the hallucinations or amnesia or the feeling dead inside. He’s wanted to tell Zayn since he was officially diagnosed cause it was kind of a big deal at the time but he’s never wanted to worry him or have him see him as a crazy person. He doesn't want Zayn to know how fucked up he is inside.

 

Harry only knows because he found his meds in his locker last year and wouldn’t let it go until Liam told him the truth and he tries not to be worried but Liam always feels like it’s a burden for Harry to even be aware of it to be honest. He doesn’t want that with Zayn.

 

“How long?” Zayn asks

 

“Just a few days.” Liam lies. It’s actually been almost a year since he properly looked at his face in a mirror for anything aside from passing by the one in a bathroom.

 

Zayn bites his lip a little. Maybe he just knows how uncomfortable Liam is with talking about it or maybe he doesn’t want to call out Liam for lying but he doesn’t push it any further to ask why Liam won’t look at himself.

 

“You know, I think we’re perfect opposites. When I don’t see myself for awhile, it’s like I forget who I am so I always feel like I have to look at myself. _Constantly_. Even if I don’t want to. And I get sick of myself. I think vanity is more like a curse than a genuine trait to my personality, y’know?”

 

Liam tilts his head to the side as he watches him for a moment. Zayn’s never told him that before.

 

Liam agrees. They are perfect opposites. While his mind was a confined prison in his skull he had to escape from constantly, Zayn’s mind was a cavern he disappeared into. They could both be hanging out together and totally quiet as they vanish into the strange world’s of their minds and still manage to find each other despite the polarity.

 

Zayn doesn't let on to how thoughtful he truly is most of the time because that's not what people expect from him. They expect him to be vacant. Thoughtless and self-absorbed with little to him past his looks. Liam knows that's not him, though.

 

They didn’t tell each other everything but that never got in the way of feeling like they’ve always known one another. Zayn lives in his head a lot and Liam lives outside of his. It was a strange and perfect symbiosis for their relationship.

 

There was also a downside to that though. Having friends like Zayn and even Harry made him feel a little dull. He’s never had to question why Zayn associates with him but it does cross his mind just a little when Zayn distances himself from Liam sometimes, even if they always come back to each other.

 

Sometimes he didn't understand what Zayn and Harry saw in him at all. They were all deep and into philosophy and they read big old books so they bonded over things that Liam didn't because he wasn't nearly as smart and interesting as them. Just the virgin Liam with his head in the clouds.

 

After disassociating for a moment, Liam’s eyes refocus as he comes back, finding Zayn waiting patiently for him after he temporarily leaves his body again.

 

“I’m sorry, I was listening I just-”

 

“It’s okay.” Zayn laughs a little.

 

“I still hear you even if it doesn’t translate on my face. You’re not boring me or anything.” Liam quickly assures him. Zayn was telling him pretty personal stuff right now, which is rare. The last thing he wants is Zayn to think he’s not even listening.

 

“I won’t do it again.”

 

“I won’t mind.”

 

Of course he won't. He’s used to it.

 

“I wasn’t kidding about what I said by the way… when I look in your eyes. I can see my reflection but that’s the only time I don’t get sick of myself. Cause I like looking at you.”

 

Okay, now Liam can blush and look down at the pillow. Or Zayn’s shirt. Or at just nothing as long as he’s not looking at Zayn so he won’t see him blushing after saying that.

 

He moves on swiftly with his turn then.

 

“Why were you so mad at me at Niall's party?” he decides with a legitimate thing he’s been musing over for a while.

 

Zayn’s eyebrow raise in confusion.

 

“Remember? I had to literally beg on my knees and profess my undying love until you forgave me and you never told me what I was apologizing for and I still can't figure it out.”

 

“Oh.” Zayn deflates a little, blinking downwards. Liam waits for him to answer until he looks back up, yawning.

 

“I think that’s enough questions for the night.” He says tiredly. Him yawning inadvertently makes Liam yawn as well.

 

“ ‘m exhausted”

 

“ _What a cop out._ ” Liam snorts. Zayn buries his smile in his pillow as he closes his eyes.

 

“ _D_ _unno what you’re talking about_.”

 

After a beat of silence Liam contently watches Zayn close as he rested in the soft glow of the moonlight until he falls asleep. His skin looks like it's been dusted with the exhaled breath of a star. And he’s here with Liam swimming under his covers with him again.

 

“ _You look like an angel_.” he whispers.

 

Zayn shakes his head a little with his eyes still closed.

 

“ _I’m an incubus Liam. Not an angel_.” he says back. He doesn’t sound very sleepy anymore. Liam closes his heavy eyes too, unable to keep them open any longer. Zayn is so warm. Even from here it feels like the bed is heating up like it might catch fire.

 

“ _I killed someone_.”

 

Liam's eyes open again.

 

“ _Huh?”_

 

Zayn sucks in a breath, sighing deeply. Liam thinks he must not have actually heard him as Zayn seems asleep after a minute of silence. Another question pops into his mind for him to ask just to make sure.

 

“ _How will I know if it’s really you?”_

 

“ _Our eyes aren't the same colour.”_ he says into the pillow, eyes still closed. Liam leans a little closer, careful not to touch him as he moves the pillow separating them aside.

 

_“Will you still be here in the morning?”_

 

Zayn’s eyes flutter open slowly. His pupil is so blown up, none of the brown is visible at all this time, Liam being so close he can feel his lashes against his skin and the heat radiating off him.

 

 _“I’m not gonna leave you again.”_ He softly whispers.

 

Liam closes his eyes then, wanting so badly to reach out to him, just feel his familiar touch again. Now, he might not get to touch Zayn ever again.

 

_“You can.”_

 

Liam's eyebrows raise.

 

_“Can what?”_

 

“ _Touch me… if you want. I won't hurt you again._ ”

 

Liam's fatigue won't even let him move a muscle now. He's practically asleep already. He’s pretty sure he’s dreaming.

 

“ _I’m sorry I hurt you. I didn’t mean to.”_ He hears Zayn’s voice utter, dragging into Liam’s dreams.

 

 _“It’s… okay.”_ He slurs, voice thick with sleep.

 

_“I love you.”_

 

 _“... loveyou… too._ ” Liam is almost too tired to even respond as he words blend into each other.

 

Right as he nods off, Zayn’s lips faintly press into his. He's so hot it almost burns. It’s just barely there but, it’s still contact enough to erupt something deep inside of him. Except this time, it’s not a ravenous lust, nor does he lose control of his body. It’s warm and gentle, like how sunlight feels when it licks against cold skin. It radiates in him from the inside out but before he even has a chance to kiss back, he’s fast asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be called "Abnormal" comments are always welcome :)


	3. Abnormal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam doesn't think he's digging being a virgin anymore. With how much has been changing in his life, he figures he might as well change that too. But maybe things are changing a little too much...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smut. That is all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following week after Zayn and Liam reunited was no more ordinary than any of their days since the fire… which means it wasn't normal at all.

 

The night Zayn slept over Liam’s wasn't exactly calm. Finding out that your best friend virtually has a split personality that makes him immune to fatal injury and gives him hypersexuality was nothing calm but, it was calm compared to other days. The type of calm that was usually a signal for a storm approaching in Liam’s mind. He didn’t trust that anything normal could stay for long anymore around here. He and Zayn's relationship was no exception to that.

 

It actually became the most abnormal thing in Liam’s life.

 

There was still a curfew at night that no one dared to break but, they still got on fine without any more incidents.

 

Harry was glad to see Liam and Zayn back into the old swing of things. The day after the funeral, he noticed that not only had Zayn got out of Liam’s car the next day at school but, he was also wearing Liam’s clothes. An oversized Metallica t-shirt he and Harry both got at a concert and Liam's Adidas jacket with grey sweats with Liam’s jersey number, 11, on the front. Not quite his usual stylish look with the leather jacket and saggy jeans.

 

Harry immediately corners Liam the second he and Zayn part ways inside.

 

“What the hell was that?” Harry questioned him, a wide grin spread across his face. Liam hiked up his bag, rolling his eyes.

 

“It’s called carpooling,” Liam says. Harry shakes his head at him

 

“I think I sense a hint of a slumber party I wasn’t invited to.” He says slyly “Unless you guys have a new hobby of wearing each other’s clothes to school?”

 

“After the funeral, we came back to my house for tea and ended up getting caught in the rain so we talked for a while. By the time it stopped raining, it was well past the curfew so he just stayed the night. All he had at my house was the tux he wore to the funeral so he borrowed some clothes. _No big deal_.”

 

“So Zayn's back." Harry smiles

 

"What did you “talk” about?” Harry does sarcastic air quotes around the word talk. Liam shrugs.

 

“Personal stuff.”

 

Harry eyes him closely as they walk to their lockers until he finds what he’s looking for, mouth falling open as he grabs Liam’s shirt collar, making him yelp in surprise.

 

“Harry! What’re you--”

 

“You naughty little slut!” Harry laughs, pointing at Liam’s neck

 

“Who gave you this then hmm? Did Sophia stay the night as well?”

 

Liam had forgotten about the marks on his neck Zayn’s hands left there from last night and fresh ones added this morning. Harry gapes when he sees that it’s, in fact, the mark of someone being strangled as will as a few hickeys.

 

“Liam…” He gasps, letting go as Liam pulls his collar back up. “Oh my god did you guys actually…”

 

Liam squints, not understanding what he means until he makes the obscene gesture of one finger entering the other through a hole, repeatedly, making Liam turn beet red.

 

“No!” He shouts, grabbing Harry’s hands so he’ll stop. Harry frowns.

 

“Oh… well, what’s with the shit on your neck?”

 

“We kind of made out last night… or t-this morning but _not in the way you think_ -” Liam tries to rush out an explanation but, he’s lost Harry in the first half of his sentence, already losing his shit.

 

“OH MY GOD! You guys almost fucked didn’t you-” Liam covers Harry’s mouth, hissing at him to be quiet before someone hears as Zayn is right down the hallway, talking to a few of his friends. Harry licks his hand, making him scoff in disgust.

 

“Are you an animal?” Liam wipes his hand off on Harry's shirt, which he slaps away.

 

“He’s a million fucking miles away, he can’t hear us.” Harry laughs.

 

Just as he says that, Zayn happens to look up. Liam swears he smirks at them before going back to listening to whatever Anthony, Ben and Joey are saying, like, maybe he _can_ hear them. At this point, nothing is impossible.

 

Liam looks back at Harry, sighing. Well, Harry figures there’s his answer. Liam opens his locker, ignoring Harry grinning at him.

 

“What exactly did you do this morning?”

 

Liam only shakes his head, not revealing anything. He doesn't even really know what that was this morning. Harry was content enough with what he already revealed, though.

 

“So.” He chirps with a giddy grin. Liam throws his bag into the locker

 

“So.” Liam parrots.

 

“What are you guys now?”

 

“What do you mean what are we? We’re still _friends_. Just like me and you.”

 

Harry quirks an eyebrow, looking back at Zayn down the hall, now turned in a way that suggested he might be watching them. Harry shakes the eerie feeling. There was no way he could hear them in this crowded hall so far away.

 

“You and I don’t make a habit of making out and/or doing _other things_ and then pretend like it didn’t happen the next day.”

 

Liam doesn’t say anything in response so Harry sighs, getting serious as he takes out his wallet and gives something to Liam.

 

“I've been carrying this around for myself in the instance of an emergency but I think you should take it just in case things go a little further next time Zayn “stays the night” cause I know you don’t have any.”

 

Liam’s eyes bulge when Harry puts a condom in his hand.

 

“Harry what are you _doing_ ,” He quickly conceals it, looking around to make sure no one sees as if Harry just revealed a gun to him.

 

“I’m making sure you have protection. I can just sense that you’re gonna be having sex soon. You know… I sense stuff. Better one of us uses it than letting it go to waste. At least if you’re gonna do it, you’ll do it safely.”

 

Liam glares at him, shoving the condom in his locker.

 

“God, what are you, my _mother_?” He grumbles to himself. Harry shrugs, glancing down the hall at Zayn again who’s gone back to debating with his friends.

 

“More like you’re manifested consciousness. Now, back to you and Zayn--”

 

“Sorry to piss on your party but there is nothing with "me and Zayn" that requires a condom. That's never gonna happen. Like ever. Okay? It isn’t possible.”

 

Harry rolls his eyes, crossing his arms as he looks back at Liam.

 

“And why not? Clearly you guys are battling against some pretty fucking intense sexual frustration if these marks on your neck give any indication of what happens when you’re alone together.”

 

“Okay, we made out or whatever. So what? People do that all the time. I'm not _gay_!” Liam hissed. Harry tuts his head disapprovingly.

 

“I didn't say you were dipshit.” He rolls his eyes.

 

“Don't be so close-minded. I see the way you look at each other. Everyone in the _room_ can see it. You don't always have to put a label on how you feel about someone. Sometimes it's just that other-wolrdly. That's what you are mate. What you guys have isn't something that can be reduced to a label, cause it's yours and it's _always been yours._  You guys are perfect for each other.” Harry says earnestly.

 

Liam couldn't talk about this right now. The morning has been too overwhelming as it is and he just can't discuss this right now.

 

“Aside from the fact that I can't touch him which I can't even _begin_ to explain to you, in case you’ve forgotten, I have a whole girlfriend that I really care about still?” Liam reminds him.

 

“Of course you can touch him. I assume you've already done more than just touch each other. And as far as the other one, there’s this thing people do you might've heard of called _breaking up_?”

 

“I have no reason to break up with her.”

 

“I can give you 20.”

 

Liam laughs out loud, shaking his head as he continues to rummage through his locker, looking for his old inhaler he lost in here a few years ago.

 

“I’d love to hear what you're peyote baked brain has to come up with.”

 

“I’m looking at one right now.” Harry murmurs, leaning his back against the locker with one foot up as he waves. Liam looks to where he’s staring, seeing Zayn waving back with a pretty smile.

 

“And I can bet my entire ass that he wouldn’t mind seeing you do it either.” He says as he smiles innocently at Zayn, who smiles even wider. Liam elbows him in his side.

 

“Stop staring at him while you’re saying that. It’s creeping me out.” He hisses.

 

“You really think he can hear me?” Harry tilts his head curiously. Zayn looks back at his friends then.

 

“Zaynie, your Lima Bean has wet dreams about you whenever Sophia wanks him,” Harry whispers narrowing his eyes. Of course, Zayn doesn't react at all but Liam still goes red and hits him in his crotch, making Harry double over, wheezing in pain.

 

 _“You dick!”_ He mutters through clenched teeth while Harry falls back against the locker, clutching his balls and stomach.

 

"Fuck, Liam why...." He groans with his mouth open wide like an old man.

 

"I'm not breaking up with Sophia Harry! Just because something happened with Zayn doesn’t mean shit. Despite what you think, I actually like her. She’s not some disposable piece of trash I can just dump cause I feel like it. She’s a real life person. The only person who's ever showed any interest in me ever. I don't want to fuck that up more than I already have."

 

"She’s _not_ the only person who’s ever been into you. But of course, you don’t know that cause you’re fucking blind.” Harry thumps his glasses.

 

“And there’s a reason she was so interested in you but you don’t wanna hear that of course. And you were just telling me you guys have nothing in common..." He stands back up straight with his head against the lockers, sticking his hand down his trousers.

 

“I've never heard you swear before either, Christ.” he adds after he adjusts his balls like he's not standing in public.

 

"Real classy Haz," Liam snorts sarcastically.

 

“And anyways, I only said that because I thought our relationship wasn't going anywhere but I've been thinking lately."

 

"Thinking what?"

 

"I think I wanna have sex."

 

Harry looks over at him in surprise. He’s been lead to believe that all things sex related really grossed Liam out on account of him hating to talk about it at all. Virginity was sort of Liam’s thing.

 

"What happened to waiting for the right time?"

 

"Waiting is fucking _boring_ ," He moans.

 

“Seriously, where did you acquire this potty mouth of yours? Is you swearing like a sailor an effect of your sudden sexual desires?” Harry asks thoughtfully. Liam shrugs.

 

"You said you see me having sex in the near future. I'm thinking maybe you're right. I'm sick of being known as the “precious bean” while everyone else is just having the time of their goddamn lives, sleeping with _asshole_ indie rock band members and just being… non-virginal looking. Virginity is not a hot trend.” He continues, slamming his locker after he finds his empty inhaler finally, making a note to get it refilled this week.

 

He doesn't care if some of what he just said aren’t even real concepts. Harry blinks a few times as he smiles before putting his hands up to stop Liam from leaving.

 

“Okay wait… are you talking sex with Soph or Z?” Harry laughs loudly.

 

Liam shoves his curly head away from him, pulling his green headband down over his eyes.

 

Harry laughs, flapping his arm around in front of him blindly until he finds Liam's neck, pulling him into a headlock and giving him a nuggie, finally getting him back for the shot to the balls.

 

They both laugh as they wrestle in the hall until Liam pulls Harry's headband down to his neck when falls back against the lockers and practically shouts when he sees that Zayn is right behind them.

 

"Hey." he chirps, all friendly and nice with his pink daffodil still perched in his hair. Harry and Liam both nearly jump out of their skin.

 

"Aye!" Harry yells, letting go of Liam and clearing his throat to make it sound natural and not like Zayn just scared the shit out of him.

 

“Hiya.”

 

Liam feels sweat beading on his head as he smiles a tad bit manically, wondering how long he's been standing there and how much of that he just heard. If he heard any at all, he easily maintains an impenetrable poker face.

 

He steps in between them then, leaning against the lockers nonchalantly as he turns towards Liam.

 

Harry makes a peeved face behind his back from being cut off.

 

“Are you doing anything tonight?” Zayn asks Liam, his eyes slowly flitting up his face as he casually plucks the daffodil from behind his ear and twirls it between his fingers.

 

Harry grins, with his mouth wide open in shock at Liam, wiggling his eyebrows behind Zayn's head.

 

Liam blinks, trying hard to keep a straight face as he turns into a stone.

 

“Actually, yeah. He is busy tonight.” Harry answers for him since he suddenly doesn't seem to speak English, stepping back in front of Zayn.

 

He rests his arm on Liam's shoulder, thumping his ear as he smiled which makes Liam frown in confusion.

 

“Oh?” Zayn tilts his head against the locker as he sticks out his bottom lip to pout a little.

 

“We're going to see Niall today in the hospital. D’ya wanna come with?”

 

Liam had completely forgotten about that.

 

"You should come, he asked about you a few days ago. You guys can be busy _together_.” Harry smirks.

 

The slight smile wipes off Zayn's face as he stands up straight and starts coughing into his fist abruptly, clearing his throat.

 

"Really?" He chokes

 

Harry and Liam both nod.

 

"Are you alright?" Liam asks him carefully. Zayn nods quickly, all that charm suddenly gone.

 

"Yeah, 'm fine. I think 'm just" he clears his throat again "Catching a bit of cold."

 

"You look pretty good to me. Very _non-virginal_. Don't you think so Liam?" Harry says, smirking very obviously at Liam now.

 

Liam glares at him, wanting to smack his stupid curly head again. He knows exactly what he's doing with his suggestive tone. Zayn looks between them.

 

“Very _what_?”

 

Liam looks back at Zayn, derailing the subject entirely.

 

"You should come with us.”

 

Zayn scratches the bridge of his nose, looking off to the side.

 

"Actually, it _just_ slipped my mind that I do have to do something later for, um, cheer." Liam tilts his head to the side, wondering why Zayn is lying. He always fidgets with his face and avoids eye contact when he lies. Liam could read his body language like a text message.

 

He went from total flirt to escape mode in an instant.

 

"Maybe next time." He says, giving Liam his daffodil then before backing away as he stuck his hands in his pockets. Liam waves at him with furrowed eyebrows

 

"Okay... see you?"

 

"Cheers!" Harry calls. Zayn turns back around for a moment then.

 

“Oh and Hazza, I'd put some ice on that if I were you.” he says, looking towards Harry’s crotch briefly before winking as he smirks and sashays away.

  
Liam waits until he's totally out of sight to hit Harry in the arm, furious.

 

“Un- _fucking_ -real! I hate you. I absolutely hate you!”

 

Harry pushes Liam away, laughing.

 

“Stop being so paranoid Christ! He probably saw you hit me. Let's not be irrational.”

 

Liam rolls his eyes. He knows Zayn wasn't looking when he did that. They carry on, Liam making sure Harry agrees not to make embarrassing comments about him around Zayn no matter how far away they think he is.

 

"That was so weird..." Liam murmurs with the flower to his nose as they walk away.

 

"Yeah..." Harry agrees "For a second there I thought he was trying to ask you out on a date. Maybe change your “virginal” status?”

 

Liam stops walking as his hand drops, rolling his eyes.

 

"Seriously." He deadpans "Do you have an off switch or are you always thinking about me and Zayn having sex?”

 

Harry laughs.

 

“Yeah my sex life is so dry I have nothing better to think about aside from you and Zayn fucking”

 

Liam shakes his head, done with the sex talk.

 

“I was _talking_ about with Niall. They were really good friends, why wouldn't he want to come see him? He was clearly lying about having something else to do. He hasn't really done anything with the cheerleaders since the fire.”

 

Harry only shrugs.

 

"Maybe he has something to do he didn't want to announce. Who knows? And yes, I do have an off switch. It's in my ass, attached to my prostate so, there's basically no chance of it ever going off." Harry sighs, slinging his arm over Liam's shoulder as they continue on around the corner.

 

"Do you really think he was asking me out?" Zayn hears Liam ask as he watches them walk right past him from where he's stopped right around the corner so they don't notice him.

 

Zayn tilts his head up with his eyes squeezed shut, balling his fist up and hitting the wall behind him in frustration, which puts a huge hole in the concrete.

 

" _Fuck_ ," he mutters, looking down at his hand.

 

_‘I’m gonna let you know now, Liam wants to fuck you. That's good right?’_

 

Zayn looks into his phone at his reflection, glaring at the screen.

 

 _“What the fuck did you do to Niall!?_ ” He hisses. Before he can get an answer, he notices two first year boys standing nearby gawking at him.

 

Zayn flinches at them as his eyes flash completely black, baring his fangs and growling low, expunging something dark in his aura, making them both yelp and run away.

 

 _‘He's not gonna die, you can calm your knickers,’_ the voice murmurs in his head. Zayn looks at the screen again.

 

“What does that mean Lux? What if he remembers?!?”

 

_‘If he remembered don’t you think we’d be in jail right now?’_

 

Zayn quickly puts his phone away and leaves when he senses two girls watching across from him little ways down the hall, hearing them whispering to each other about him talking to himself like a freak.

 

He didn't know that Niall had woke up from his coma already. He’s glad he did but, he’s worried about what that means now. He doesn’t even know how that’s possible. He goes to find a quiet place alone so he can talk to his reflection without looking like a lunatic. He needs to find out what the hell happened to Niall if he’s not dead.

 

_‘Stop being so fucking paranoid. I can show you what happened in the narcissus marsh if you really wanna know.’_

 

Zayn nods to himself as he goes to class.

 

The narcissus marsh is a body of freshwater at the edge of Manningtree where daffodils grow. Narcissus is a fancy way of saying 'daffodil'. The water on top on the marsh stays still while a deep river flows beneath the surface, dipping below like a waterfall. No one knows how far down it goes or where it leads to. Scientists dropped all kinds of things in it to see where anything might surface.

 

Dye, ping pong balls… Harry's older brother and his friends even dumped dozens of empty bottles of grey goose in it once. Nothing ever surfaces. Some people think it leads to another universe. Or you know, that it's just really deep.

 

The narcissus marsh was the only place Zayn could see the other side of his reflection fully.

 

He knows he can’t visit Niall, even though he wanted to. Not that he could actually apologise for putting him there in the first place. He didn't really call the shots once he started getting hungry again and his stomach was very empty right now.

 

He was already slipping again and he knows he’s gonna lose absolute control of himself again soon. He seriously needed to figure something out before the next full moon or this road trip through hell wasn't going to end well for anyone in this godforsaken town.

 

  
*

***earlier this morning***

 

When Liam wakes up, it's from the best sleep he’s had in weeks. He only had a few memories from yesterday. When he tries to move, something that feels like an iron bar is locking him in his bed.

 

First, he panics, having no idea what could be so heavy that he can't even move it until he turns around and is met with the breathtaking image of Zayn's sleeping face right next to him, his skinny arm holding onto Liam in his sleep, spooning him from behind.

 

Spooning as in touching him, skin to skin... to skin...to skin... to skin. Just endless amounts of skin with his bare chest and arms lapping over Liam's, making him wonder how they didn't end up fucking each other in their sleep.

 

Liam has no idea how but, they must've got hot in the middle of the night and taken their clothes off. If his mum were to walk in right now and see them, she'd without a doubt think they were naked in bed. Hell, she probably already thought that without seeing them.

 

Liam wrestles his arm out from underneath Zayn's, only making him stir a little. The movement gives Liam a chance to get his arm out but he stops when Zayn's stirring also makes something poke into his waist that feels like the remote to his tv. Except Liam didn't have a TV.

 

He freezes, looking over at Zayn, still sleeping peacefully, then reaches over his pillow for his glasses. When he puts them on, he proceeds to peek under the covers. He doesn’t think he's naked as he could feel that he had on boxers but, he looks anyways.

 

Zayn stirs again, this time his arm pulling at Liam's stomach, bringing him closer. Liam hadn't ever realised how goddamn strong Zayn was until now. When Zayn pulls him in, their chests bump against each other and his head lays on Liam's cheek.

 

Zayn was always such a wild sleeper. No one ever wanted to bunk with him at sleepovers cause he'd end up halfway on top of you. Liam usually didn't really care but whatever is digging into him uncomfortably moves lower, right below the waist which felt... strange. Liam swallows thickly.

 

He carefully reached down towards where it's stabbing his crotch and gasps when he gets a handful of what feels like a hard-on that definitely does not belong to him. Zayn sucks in a sharp breath the moment he touches him so Liam’s whole body goes limp, closing his eyes as he literally "plays dead" - sleep edition.

 

He doesn't move for probably a whole minute. When Zayn doesn't seem to wake up, Liam goes back to trying to look under the cover, just to make sure Zayn wasn't actually naked. Thankfully, neither of them are but... Zayn is definitely hard as fuck and the sight of it touching Liam like _this_ … the fact that he fucking _touched_ it... Liam _feeling_ it against him like this... all he can do is stare, mouth wide open as a chorus of _, "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god",_ plays over and over in his head, internally screaming every time Zayn moves against him.

 

He's trapped under Zayn's arm. He couldn't get up unless Zayn woke up first and who's to say the sex haze wouldn't just take over the moment they were both awake with them touching like this? Plus Liam was getting hard too, just imagining unholy things about what Zayn could do to him with this thing digging into his _soul_.

 

 _oh God..._.

 

His dick twitches. He decides to just relax and it’ll just play out. Zayn would wake up, see that he'd fallen asleep holding Liam and then he could deal with the realisation that they'd both got morning wood on his own. He’d see that Liam was asleep and move before he thinks he can wake up. Yes, this was an excellent plan.

 

Liam relaxes against Zayn, letting himself be his personal teddy bear for a little while longer as he closed his eyes and experienced the rollercoaster ride that was Zayn's huge erection rubbing against his own.

 

It was actually harder to relax than he thought it would be with all the blood rushing downstairs, throbbing and demanding his attention.

 

" _Fuck_ ," he whispers, fighting against the urge to touch himself.

 

If he did, he'd also be touching Zayn and he just could not live through the awkward tragedy of Zayn waking up to Liam literally wanking on him.

 

Zayn hums in his sleep, the sound actually pornographic in Liam's ears. Fuck this. Liam can't hold off any longer. He quickly turns on his side, just deciding to risk it all. Zayn doesn't even flinch. Liam’s dick is free on the other side now so, he could probably rub one off quickly and just go back to sleep.

 

The sun hadn't come up yet. He reckons he had about 1 more hour until he needed to get up. While this change in the position offered him a solution to get rid of his morning woody, it presented the all too perfect instance of Zayn's now being right up against the crack of his ass, like this was the universe's idea of some kind of joke.

 

Whatever. He couldn't stand it any longer. Actually, this was even better. Having something down there was how he liked it best so, he’d finish faster now.

 

Liam bites the pillow in front of him and reaches into his underpants, hissing at the contact of it. He smears the little bits of pre-cum collecting at the tip down his shaft as he begins slowly relieving himself, biting down hard on the pillow to resist the urge to moan and risk waking up the person attached to the dick almost up his ass.

 

His eyes roll back into his head when Zayn moves again, taking the chance to push back against him as he stroked himself.

 

Suddenly, Zayn's hand moves from his clenched stomach to down Liam's pants, knocking Liam's hand away, replacing it with his own.

 

The pillow falls out of Liam's mouth as he gasps in shock, turning his head to the side just as Zayn's chin hooks into the crook of his neck, mouth slightly agape and eyes fully gone, black as the morning sky just outside his window.

 

He continues jerking Liam off for him, Liam's mouth staying open with a mixture of shock, pleasure and confusion all at once. Mostly confused because there's no surge of lust. No ravenous hunger. No lost control of his actions, aside from the natural instinct to arch his back and curl his toes.

 

No Zayn being totally dominating to the point of hurting Liam again. In fact, Zayn is almost being gentle with him. They both seem totally conscious and in control of everything that's happening, the only abnormality being the fact that Zayn's eyes are completely black. Liam doesn't waste another moment trying to figure it out.

 

In the mirror across from Liam's bed, he sees Zayn's hand moving under the cover and his face all in Liam's neck. He doesn’t know how that mirror is right there seeing that it’s been in his closet for ages but it doesn’t matter because it's an image he's going to have ingrained in his brain for the rest of his life… if he survives this anyways.

 

He relaxes against Zayn, closing his eyes as Zayn sucks lightly at his neck, his dick rubbing in the crease of Liam's ass while he strokes Liam with long, slow pumps at first, working him up into a wiggling, whimpering, mess and making him make embarrassing noises that catch in his throat.

 

" _Fuc_ ," the word chokes up in Liam's throat when Zayn thrusts a little behind him, trying to get more friction against his own dick. God if he’s ever wondered what that would feel like before. And still, wonder what it’d feel like if the thin fabric wasn’t there…

 

" _Do it... harder._ " Liam manages to get out, sounding annoyingly whiny and needy. He's not even sure if Zayn can hear him.

 

When his eyes are black, he's in a whole different state of mind. Liam just pushes back against him some more until he gets the message, fucking against Liam with less restraint until his bed is rocking. Liam silently prays that it doesn't break in half… the bed that is. He wouldn't mind breaking in half right now.

 

Zayn shushes Liam, as he’s being a little too audible and his mother is right down the hall. His mouth presses right into a sweet spot at the crook of his neck as he does so, which makes Liam turn into jelly, biting his lip to whimper silently.

 

He grabs fistfuls of Zayn’s shaggy hair, holding back nothing as he pulls down, feeling the heat clenching up in his gut, getting set to release his load all over. It's like Zayn is rocking into his entire body by just touching the outside of him.

 

This was a thousand times better than Liam's dreams or last night since Liam doesn’t leave his body this time. Just as Zayn's hips stutter against him, Liam climaxes at the same time, letting out the softest moan his ever heard come out of him.

 

The second it's over, the heat and weight of Zayn's body are instantly all gone, off of Liam and off the bed at the same time without a word.

 

Liam blinks his lulled eyes over his shoulder, watching Zayn's fantail tattooed on his back, halfway covered by his wavy black hair as he casually strolls to Liam’s bathroom, licking his fingers clean as the door closes.

 

Liam’s eyes roll back, collapsing again in a heap of limbs and sweat. He listens to the shower starting, suddenly all cold, alone and unsure of his entire life.

 

On the ride to school, they don't say anything at all about what they did this morning. Liam isn't even sure if Zayn remembers it to be honest. Last night, he was so open about everything and now, he was being distant again, not saying anything at all unless Liam spoke first.

 

"Is seeing your reflection or touching anyone all that triggers it?" Liam asks as he drives, trying to keep his voice light. Zayn stares out the window with his hand prompted up against it, covering the entire bottom half of his face.

 

"It comes out whenever it wants to." He replies, continuing to stare out the window. Liam swallows.

 

"How long have you had... _it_?"

 

"Since the fire."

 

Liam figured as much. Something traumatic usually triggers stuff like this. The fire shocked Zayn that night to the point of going mute. Everything was really starting to make sense now.

 

“Have you talked about it with anyone else?”

 

Zayn dragged his hand across his face, sighing tiredly like he's annoyed.

 

"Lima, I don't want to talk about it with _anyone_! I told you what's wrong so just fucking leave it now, yeah?" He snaps, failing to keep his voice steady. Liam nods, not wanting to pester him any further than he clearly already has.

 

He decides to fill the rest of the ride's drive with the radio. Turning up the volume so he won't have to sit in tense silence. They just so happened to be playing Inferno by High Tide. He just lets it play. Even though he hated them, he still liked their music. Zayn turns it to something else, some song by an artist called Steve Lacy that was playing on one of the obscure indie music stations.

 

His attitude with Liam in the car on top of the bizarre morning was already making Liam’s head spin as it is so he was a little on edge when Harry cornered him at his locker and interrogated him about Zayn. What was he supposed to say? Then Zayn coming up to him in the hall acting so strange.

 

Liam just does what he does best: dissociate from the weirdness and focus on other pressing matters. Like High Tide blowing up. He couldn’t get away from this damn band now. They overplayed that dumb song on the radio so much, he hated their music now.

 

The band had gotten an insane amount of attention from the being known as heroes for saving people from the fire even though Liam has no idea how that rumour got started. He may not remember the fire but he vividly remembers them disappearing right before it started. They didn't help anyone escape. All they did was act all creepy and practically kidnap Zayn. Now they were being recognised as these astounding legends everywhere.

 

Harry tells him later that they were coming back to town to perform at a dance a little over a month from now. Liam didn't want to go to the dumb dance but, Sophia really wanted to and obviously as her boyfriend, he was pretty much obligated to take her. She hadn't been back to putting the pressure on Liam again to have sex since the fire but Liam convinced himself that he was totally ready for it despite everything that's been happening with Zayn. Or maybe he wanted to have sex now because of what’s happening with Zayn.

 

He stayed over at Liam's house every day that week. They developed a routine and an unspoken agreement not to openly talk about what they were doing every morning.

 

Zayn would come back home to Liam sometime in the middle of the night, crawling in his bed and cuddling behind him. Liam started leaving the front door unlocked so it’d be easier for him to sneak in at night.

 

At some point in the morning, Zayn would wake up with black eyes and a boner. Even if Liam was up before him, Zayn would still find him wherever he was.

 

Whether it was in Liam's bed or in the shower or in the car on the way to school (which he's sure many people in the parking lot side eyed suspiciously when they saw Zayn’s face in Liam's lap), Liam found himself doing things he only ever dreamed of, every day. Everything but having sex.

 

He didn't read into it very deeply. Sometimes it felt like it happened because Liam was the first and only body near Zayn. He’d just wake up really horny and as soon as he got one off and made sure Liam did too, it was all over.

 

Liam doesn’t know why but Zayn always made him spit instead of swallowing even if he wanted to. It’s not like he could ask why. They never acknowledged what was going on after it was over. They'd just get each other off and go on about their day, like getting hit by lightening every day and then acting as if nothing happened.

 

Honestly, he didn't even know what they were anymore. One minute, they're best friends, like old times. Another, Zayn is acting like he can't stand Liam. Next, they're kissing/more than kissing, then ignoring the fact that they're kissing/more than kissing. Then Zayn is asking Liam out and then blowing him off immediately after. The rollercoaster was giving him whiplash.

 

His personality on a Russian roulette switchboard except every trigger had a bullet. Liam never knows which Zayn he's gonna get. Horny Zayn. Angry Zayn. Mute Zayn. Never a happy Zayn… the only thing that stayed consistent was the fact that he never left Liam's side too much all week. Or maybe it was Liam following Zayn around but whatever. Same difference.

 

He wasn’t even close to being normal anymore and it got worse every day. Angry and horny was not a good combination. There was obviously more going on with Zayn than he was able to handle on his own but Liam couldn't talk to him about it anymore. He can't force him to tell anyone he’s struggling with his mental health and it was turning them into a cluster fuck of a relationship.

 

At least with Sophia, all they truly wanted from each other was sex at this point and he was planning on getting that over with as soon as he could.

 

  
*

 

Also as the week progressed, they were approaching the one month anniversary of the fire and Tom Harlock’s murder. Everyone was starting to come back to life again in Manningtree. Everyone except for Zayn.

 

He actually wasn't lying when he said he was getting sick. Along with his rampant mood swings, his health deteriorated more and more with each passing day. His cheeks were sinking in, skin looking ashen and pale with dark circles under his dimmed eyes. He's lost weight. A lot of weight. His hair lost all its lustre and he didn't even bother trying to comb it or wear nice clothes. He had _acne_. Zayn’s never had acne. He'd been wearing Liam's sweats and t-shirts all week from never being home to get his own clothes anymore. Harry suggested that he might as well move in at this point.

 

It was the complete opposite of the Zayn from a month ago. Whereas he was attractive, arrogant and charming, this one was irritable, sluggish and… slightly ill-favored. Apparently, as life came back to their town, it drained out of Zayn.

 

He looked like death. Liam was getting worried it was more wrong than what Zayn was letting on. And he wasn't the only one getting worried.

  
The day of the full moon, things went from really abnormal to really extremely horribly abnormal.

 

"Hey, no offence but you look like shit," Harry says to Zayn from where he's sitting across from him at lunch.

 

It wasn’t a good day, as usual. Harry's helpful comment didn't seem to faze him at all. Cher and Joey were out sick with a virus and Ben and Anthony have been exiled from sitting with them at the table anymore since Zayn started sitting with them again. Zayn cursed both of them out a few days ago for asking him about why he wasn’t coming to philosophy club anymore. So it’s just the 3 musketeers today again like old times. Except it’s tense as fuck with anxiety thick in the air.

 

Liam has been tiptoeing around Zayn but here’s Harry, being antagonising as per usual for no damn reason but to be antagonising. He thinks the best way for Zayn to talk about what’s wrong is to provoke him. Liam thinks that is a very stupid tactic.

 

He glares at Harry for pointing out the obvious so bluntly, throwing his balled up napkin at him. Harry shakes his head, silently asking “ _what_?”

 

Liam hasn't told Harry in full about Zayn but he did tell him to be careful of what he says to him. Obviously, Harry wasn't taking Liam’s warning seriously.

 

Liam looks back at Zayn as he’s slumped over with his chin laid in his arms, staring out a window with dull eyes while they ate. Well, while Liam and Harry ate anyways. Liam ended up eating all the food Zayn had. Stress eating again.

 

“Liam, slow down or you'll choke.” Harry laughs. Zayn glances at him briefly, watching Liam stuff a large pickle into his mouth.

 

“No he won't.”

 

Liam actually does start choking at Zayn's allusion to having first hand knowledge that Liam doesn't have a gag reflex. He coughs suddenly while hitting his chest, his cheeks burning as his face flushes. He discreetly kicks Zayn under the table as he does so, making Zayn smirk and wink at Liam before going back to staring out the window with a faded smile.

 

Okay…. so that was very obvious _acknowledgement_. Harry looks at them with a raised eyebrow as he chews. Liam totally ignores it, busying himself with stuffing more food into his mouth. Zayn's leg bumps Liam's under the table, moving against him steadily. He ignores that too.

 

"Are you sure you don't want to eat anything?" Harry asks Zayn.

 

Zayn shakes his head.

 

"Have you got a virus?" Liam asks with his mouth full. There was a virus currently spreading around that had quite a few people missing school again. Zayn shakes his head solemnly.

 

"It's just wearing off or something." He mumbles as he looks on glumly. Liam realises that he's not actually looking out the window. He’s staring at his reflection and it doesn't seem like he's very enamoured with what's staring back at him.

 

"What's wearing off?"

 

Zayn never answers him, clutching his stomach as he feels it growling angrily. Liam watches him glare at himself. Everyone has a different view of themselves when they look at their reflection but Zayn looks at himself with a different keenness of perception.

 

Sometimes, it almost seemed like he was looking at an entirely different person too. Everyone always joked about Zayn being in love with his own reflection but… it wasn't always love. After he told Liam about how he looks in a mirror and he can't stand himself, he hasn't seen Zayn's gaze at his own reflection as vanity at all. It almost seemed like he was looking at someone he _hated_. And Liam will never understand why.

 

He meets Liam's eyes in the reflection for a second, holding his gaze for a beat before looking away, burying his face in his arms.

 

Liam can't even look at it anymore either. His mind was playing tricks on him, making it look like Zayn's reflection wasn't lining up with what Zayn was actually doing. He ignores the glass like normal, focusing on eating instead.

 

"Seriously, you should eat something. You look really sick." Harry insists, which Liam wishes he would stop saying.

 

He clearly knows he doesn't look the best since he won't stop glaring at himself or hiding his face. And Zayn said he was on a diet a while ago. Come to think of it, he hadn't seen Zayn eat anything at his house all week.

 

Liam didn't want Harry’s parental nag-mode to make Zayn snap like how he does when Liam does it. If he gets too angry, Liam fears he'll leave again and maybe not come back this time.

 

He hadn’t disappeared on them since the last funeral and he's been practically attached to Liam's hip for the last week so he knew first hand that it didn't take much to piss him off lately. Harry should know that too.

 

Harry reaches into his bag and takes out various containers of foods to choose from.

 

"I've got kale salad, sweet vegetable soup, tomato soup, organic chicken noodle--"

 

"I don't fucking eat _meat_ , Harry!" Zayn hisses into his arm in annoyance.

 

Liam bites on his lip nervously, flashing back to the day he literally raided his fridge and ate a whole raw chicken.

 

"It's not actual chicken… it's vegan. I thought it’d suit your diet." Harry frowns.

 

"I don't care what the fuck it is. Knowing your hippie-dippie ass, it's probably made out of fucking peyote cactus. Thanks but no thanks. I enjoy people food."

 

Harry laughs short, tilting his head sideways.

 

"Why are you back to being such a dick lately?" He asks sweetly.

 

 _"Harry!"_ Liam scolds. Harry glares at Liam too, offended.

 

"Seriously? Things are finally getting back to being the way they used to and he's sulking around, pissed at the whole goddamn world for no reason and I'm kind of sick of it."

 

"You literally just told him he looks like shit. Why don't you just leave him alone?"

 

"You know, I’m real sick of you always _defending_ him as well. As if any of this shit is normal.” Now Harry is angry too, turning it at Liam as they talk over Zayn as if he’s not sitting there.

 

“Don't you ever get tired of having to put up with being jerked around or are you just _really_ into abusive relationships because I’m seriously starting to think you’re a fucking masochist. Traumatic bonding perhaps?" He accuses Liam, who sinks a little bit at the unintentional jab at Liam's history with emotional trauma.

 

Harry was rarely ever angry. He was always all about positive vibes and energy. Without it, the gentle balance of everything was thrown off its hinges completely because he’s scary when he’s mad.

 

They were both being dicks right now but at least Zayn had an excuse… sort of. But Liam couldn't have Harry going over the edge too. Not now. Cause right now, their state of unrest was barely hanging on by a thread as it is. Harry and Zayn were all Liam had to keep him sane. If ⅔ were jumping this ship, Liam could be sure he was gonna be the one left to drown.

 

Zayn didn't seem to react to Harry insulting him at all. But his eyes darken dangerously when he turns his anger to Liam, sitting up slowly, making Harry gulp from the intensity of his glare. Harry being angry was a kitten compared to _Zayn_.

 

"You might wanna reconsider your fucking tone now because you _really_ don't wanna piss us off today." He growls in a low voice, balling his fists up tight.

 

Harry shakes his head, packing up all his things.

 

"Or what _Patrick Bateman_? You gonna fight me?” he huffs.

 

Zayn scowls at him.

 

_“Talk to him like that again and fucking find out.”_

 

Even Liam can’t ignore them as they look like they might actually kill each other right now. But Harry, a pacifist at heart, doesn’t do confrontation and war like Zayn. He smiles instead.

 

“Don't worry, I think I've had enough of you and your multiple personalities for the month." He chirps brightly, standing up and leaving the table.

 

“Have fun _starving_ to death without me.”

 

 _“Bite me._ ” Zayn sourly retorts.

 

After he leaves, Liam sighs, shaking his head.

 

"Did you have to insult his organic foods?"

 

Zayn sinks back into the table, groaning as he rubs his growling stomach and buried his face into his arms again.

 

“Do you want to go home?”

 

That's what Liam’s house was becoming now. Just home.

 

“I know you're on a diet. I can cook something vegetarian I know you'll like.”

 

_Or blow you under the table if you want. That'd be okay too._

 

Liam gently brushes his hand over Zayn's back. He was so cold. Abnormally cold. He can practically feel Zayn vibrating as his stomach rumbled. Liam just wants to wrap him up in a blanket and feed him soup until he feels better. The gesture makes Zayn soften up a bit as he looks at Liam.

 

“I’d love to take you up on that babe but, if we go home right now it’ll be something I’ll regret forever.”

  
Liam frowns, feeling a small chill at Zayn's use of the word _we_.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

Louis comes up to the table then and Liam doesn't think he could've picked a worse time to try to talk to Zayn right now.

 

"Hey Z, have you got a mo?" Louis asks, nervously bouncing on his heels. Zayn slowly looks up at him.

 

"What do _you_ want?"

 

Louis hesitates when he hears Zayn's tone. Like he'd rather be gargling nails than talking to Louis right now. Actually, that probably is what he’d really rather be doing.

 

“I just wanted to ask if you’re okay? You've looked ill.”

 

“I get it! I look like a piece of shit. Do we have to announce being sick?”

 

Liam winces as he goes back to eating.

 

“That's not what I-”

 

“What the fuck do you _want_ Louis?” Zayn rolls his eyes tiredly. Louis’ confidence level goes from 50% to 25%.

 

"I just wanted to _talk_ for once if that's not too much to ask?”

 

Zayn looks to one side, then back at Louis like he's waiting for something.

 

"Well?" He shakes his head, clearly annoyed.

 

"I’d prefer it _alone_." he pointedly looks at Liam, who gets the memo, scooting away from Zayn and picking up his stuff to leave them alone but Zayn grasps his arm and makes him sit back down, patting his knee under the table to assure Liam he doesn't have to go anywhere.

 

"He’s not bothering anyone." He says, bored. Louis rolls his eyes at Liam, who's avoiding eye contact.

 

"Can we meet after school somewhere later then?"

 

"There's a curfew."

 

"I don't mean out late. Like, I could come over so we can--"

 

"No." Zayn doesn't even bother trying to come up with another excuse. Louis visibly dims at being rejected so bluntly, going from 25% to 0.

 

"You didn't even let me finish!" Louis yells, annoyed. That seems to be the feather that breaks the camels back for Zayn, abandoning the amiable act. Not that he was being friendly towards Louis in the first place.

 

"Anything you could possibly want from me at this point is most definitely _everything_ I don't want from you so why don't you go find Pez, eat a bag of dicks together and leave us out of your shit circus."

 

Louis balls his fist up, hitting his other hand as he laughs bitterly before leaning down on the table, getting angry now.

 

“This has nothing to do with me and Perrie and I fucking _wish_ you would get over that already. This is about the fact that you haven't talked to me or 90% of your friends in a fucking month unless you're cursing us out and I'm just trying to figure out what the fuck happened.” He says slowly.

 

Zayn leans back against the wall as he goes back to staring out the window, unfazed. The hint is well received.

 

Louis’ jaw pulses.

 

“You don't wanna talk to me? Fine! Just remember who you'll be crawling back to again when you look around and realise you don't have _any_ friends left.”

 

Of course, Liam must be invisible to him. If he really thinks talking to Zayn like that is gonna help anything then he'd be better off just leaving right now. Liam just keeps eating his sandwich in silence.

 

“Sorry, who’s crawling to you?” Zayn snorts, tilting his head in confusion.

 

“You've never had a problem getting on your knees before.” Louis smiles sweetly.

 

Zayn's grip on Liam tightens making it harder for Liam to focus on anything else as he tries to ignore them so as not to be involved with the brewing argument.

 

“Don’t you have a cheating lesbian for that? Or did you finally realise that thing between her legs isn’t a dick so you’ve _conveniently_ come to me now, right? Well, I'm kinda busy right now so can you leave?” Zayn says, calm as he continues to gaze outside.

 

Louis doesn't go.

 

“Why the fuck are you still standing here? I said leave.”

 

“Because I'm _worried_ about you Z,” Louis says with genuine concern.

 

“I don’t wanna fight with you. I get it, you hate me. You have every right to. I hate how everything happened. I just don't want us to end like this over something so minuscule.”

 

Despite the fact that he's still a huge dick, Liam is suddenly feeling sorry for Louis. He understands how it feels, having Zayn disappear on him. Zayn obviously doesn't feel anything, his dull eyes staying hard and uncaring.

 

_“Well, I do.”_

 

The words are cold and completely raw and Liam can see it slice through Louis like a knife.

 

“Jade dying wasn't _minuscule_.” he continues.

 

“You not caring about anyone but your fucking self until you want something isn't _minuscule_.  It's a serious flaw in your character that makes me sick to my stomach. That's the only reason you're talking to me right now. That's all you've ever wanted from me and I'm done being your toy.”

 

“Zayn-”

 

“ _Leave_.”

 

Louis leans back up slowly, looking at Zayn like he's a total stranger.

 

“That’s not why I'm talking to you. I’ve never… _used_ you. Is that what you really think of me?”

 

Zayn doesn't say anything, scowling at Louis.

 

“Okay…so let me just make this clear.” Louis backtracks slowly, laughing a little.

 

 _“I care about you_. I’ve always cared about you, whether you're with me or not and I'm scared of what's happening to you. I’m trying to talk to you because _I love you._ ”

 

Liam chokes again, coughing as he tries to dislodge his throat. Zayn rolls his eyes then looks over at Liam.

 

“God, just _shut up_ already." He groans

 

"Look what you’re doing to Liam even,” he pats Liam’s back until he stops coughing.

 

“Do I need to spell it out for you?”

 

When Liam finally stops coughing, Zayn holds his waist, looking him over carefully.

 

“You alright babe?”

 

Liam nods.

 

Louis leans back up, pursing his lips.

 

“Is that your _subtle_ way of telling me the “rumours” are true?”

 

Liam blushes hard, _wishing_ he could just disappear already. Also, he wishes Louis hadn't said that because he already knows what's coming next out of Zayn's mouth isn't going to be pretty. He’s been watching him curse out all his friends all week long and Louis was just bound to be the next one at some point. Coming up to Zayn at all with his hostility was a self-drag on its own.

 

“Yeah mate. Every rumour you've ever heard about us is 1,000% true. I choke on his cock every morning cause I _can_. I showed him how, so we face fuck each other every single day, 17 times a day. We fuck until we're bleeding cum. In fact, we even _reverse_ fuck. His dick comes down through my mouth until I feel it in my toes and sits there, perfectly still, for 2 hours until we cum simultaneously and scream the lyrics to Drunk In Love, the dick sucking anthem of our generation, at the top of our fucking lungs as the pools of semen dry on our bodies so it cements us together. _Forever_.” Zayn smiles sweetly at Liam.

 

Liam can't even fully process what Zayn just said. The beginning had him screaming internally but now he doesn't know if it’d be inappropriate to laugh as he bites back a grin. Louis nods along, impressed with his creativity.

 

“Hey good for you, finally managing to break your concubine out of his glass closet. Turned him into a _cock_ sucker already. I honestly don't care that you've got another one of your personal warm mouths to replace me with cause it’s never gonna last. Just cause it's him this time doesn't make it any different. It clearly wasn’t hard to find.” he nods to Zayn's hand still resting possessively on Liam's leg.

 

Liam tenses all the way up. Apparently, Louis really wants to die today. Liam briefly wonders why everyone always comes after him when they’re going for Zayn.

 

Zayn retracts, looking back at him with sharp, diamond tipped daggers, sinking them into Louis’ face. Liam never felt more hate emitting off Zayn. It's like in the movies when someone bangs on the keys of an old piano.

 

Something in the air chills suddenly and Liam knows it's radiating off Zayn like a brewing blizzard.

 

“ _What did you just call him_ …?” he asks slowly.

 

Louis closes his eyes, sighing deeply.

 

“I didn't _mean_ that-”

 

Zayn’s chest heaves as he breathes out harshly like the air is too thin for him.

 

“You wanna see a _warm mouth_?” he hisses as he stands up suddenly, the brown in his eyes going black as he grabs Louis roughly by the collar of his shirt and almost throws him on the floor. Liam stops him from lunging at Louis like a blood-thirsty animal, holding him back while Louis falls back in surprise.

 

“ _Whoa_ , hey!” Liam’s arm cage Zayn in, alarm and shock all over his face. Zayn's not as strong as he was at the beginning of the week, thank god. Actually, he felt kind of frail in Liam's arms, like he’d shatter if he wasn’t held delicately enough.

 

He knew Zayn was in a bad mood but, he didn’t think he’d actually get into a fight with someone right now, being sick like this. Least of all that someone being Louis.

 

Zayn pulls his hands up over his face roughly and combs through his scalp. Locks of black hair fall out onto the table in the process and he wobbles unstable on his feet like he might pass out. Both Liam and Louis go from shocked to gravely disturbed when they see how weak he actually is from just simply moving too fast.

 

“ _Zayn_ ,” Liam holds him upright so he won't fall.

 

Zayn holds Liam's arm as he closes his eyes, breathing out shakily as he tries to dial back his anger.

 

His skin is _freezing_ cold. Yesterday he was burning up with a fever. Now he feels like a block of ice and his stomach is rumbling awfully. He can hear the growling low in him. It sounds like a _live animal_. Liam can feel it rippling through him and he knows it hurts. This wasn't normal. None of this is normal.

 

Zayn winces, he holding his stomach again and dry heaving air as he gags. He’s actually starving.

 

Louis tries to come around the table, despite Zayn attacking him but Zayn glares at him, pulling into Liam like he’s trying to bury himself away from Louis now.

 

“Get _away_ from me!”

 

“You're more than sick!” Louis exclaims “You’re choking and your _hair_ is falling out! Zayn just tell me what's going on with you, I'm not gonna hurt you.”

 

"You wanna know what's _wrong_ with me?" Zayn asks him incredulously, "Have you ever heard of giving someone space and leaving them the fuck _alone!?"_

 

Louis nods quickly if only to make Zayn stop  _screaming_ but he keeps going.

 

“YOU and everyone in this shitty town are _stressing me out_ , that's what's fucking going on with me Louis! I want all of you to just fuck off!” Zayn yells at him.

 

Everyone, of course, is watching them in the lunchroom, thinking a fight has just broken out… which it technically has. But with these three, it's easy to assume what they're fighting about just from looking at them.

 

“Hearing your scratchy voice rattling in my goddamn ears is what's making me gag. I’m allergic to rodents so if you really wanna do something for me then you can start by getting out of my FUCKING FACE!”

 

The lunch room is completely silent. That seems to be the final nail in the coffin. Louis shakes his head as he backs away.

 

“Okay! Okay.” Louis resigns gently so he'll calm down.

 

“I’ll go and I'll leave you alone but... I'll still be here.”

 

He looks at Liam then.

 

“Please take care of him.” he says earnestly before finally going on, looking back with worry all over his face.

 

He knew Liam wouldn't ever abandon Zayn at least but he wanted to be there for Zayn too. His health was on a steady drop and everyone was worried but too scared to approach him - both for good reasoning. If Louis’ presence was doing _that_ to Zayn then he’s gonna give him all the space in the world.

 

Zayn sits back down, glaring at Louis with death in his eyes as he sags away.

 

“We should go to the nurse,” Liam says quietly as he sits back next to him with his legs caging Zayn in now instead turned towards the dozens of people staring at them.

 

“Liam I'm fine. My hair does this all the time,” he says dismissively, sweeping it off the table with shaky hands. If that was true, Liam's never noticed it before.

 

That still doesn't put him at ease. It was obviously more than just the hair. He’s still weak and he’s not eating and he's lost an insane amount of weight in such a short time. Liam really just wants him to eat something. Zayn rolls his eyes at the look Liam is giving him. Like he's expecting him to pass out at any moment.

 

“Seriously _daddy_ , can we move on?”

 

Liam would. He would if this was any other time but some of what Louis said wasn't totally stupid.

 

"That was kind of… really intense.” Liam says with raised eyebrows.

 

"Like you give a shit about Louis." He snorts.

 

"I mean… I don't _not_ care."

 

Zayn squints as he looks out the window.

 

"What does that even mean?"

 

Liam shrugs quickly.

 

"I dunno! I'm just saying, he was serious."

 

Liam is more concerned about Zayn than Louis but he doesn’t want to bring up his health or the way he’s been acting and set him off. Zayn was a ticking time bomb right now and Liam was break dancing on a landmine.

 

"The only thing “serious” about Louis Tomlinson is his fucked entitlement and baby drama and I should've cut him out of my life ages ago. I’ve got more important people in my life to give a shit about. If my so-called “friends” have a problem with that then oh fucking well.” he says, bumping his fist lightly on Liam’s knee. Liam looks down a little, folding his lips in as he held in his smile.

 

“Honestly fuck all of them. They treat you like a dog. I told him if he ever said something like that to you again not to be surprised if he got his ass kicked. Louis didn't even have the decency to go to Jade’s _funeral_. He can go to hell.”

 

Liam’s gut heats up. He never thought Zayn noticed how Louis was towards him.

 

"He's got a baby?" Liam repeats, fidgeting with a loose thread on Zayn's shirt.

 

"I don't know Lima, we haven't fucked in months. He’s got a thing for not using condoms so he will at some point. Who the fuck _cares_.” He sighs tiredly, which was more information than Liam needed or wanted to know, to be honest. Zayn stands up to leave then so Liam quickly follows after throwing away their trash.

 

"Can we talk about something else? Let's talk about something else." He loops his arm through Liam's as they go. Liam weaves his fingers into Zayn's.

 

"How're you and your couch doing?"

 

Liam shrugs, still a little on edge. Liam’s “couch” means Sofa. A.K.A. Sophia who he hasn’t seen or talked to since Jade’s funeral.

 

Zayn was seemingly okay, mental-health wise when it was just the two of them now so maybe it was everyone else just stressing him out.

 

"Same as always."

 

"You lovebirds planning on having sex tonight?" Zayn asks, out of nowhere. Liam stops them.

 

" _What_?" he squeaks, going red all over.

 

Zayn reaches behind Liam, into his back pocket, making him jump briefly before pulling out the condom Harry gave him last week.

 

"You put this in your pocket today." Zayn flips it over on Liam's hand.

 

"I suggest you get a new one. This expired two years ago and pregnancy is in the air around here."

 

Liam isn't even surprised when he looks at the date and sees that it really had expired. He recently figured out that Zayn's senses are abnormally heightened.

 

" _Shit_..." He mutters, throwing it away "Damn it Harry."

 

"Looks like you're still gonna be the only virgin here after all." Zayn laughs, which makes Liam frown.

 

With what they've been doing all week, he would've thought that wasn't gonna be true pretty soon. Or that Zayn at least wouldn't still be asking him about Sophia as if they even qualify to be “dating” anymore.

 

Not that Liam was expecting him and Zayn to be _together_ now or anything… That was a ridiculous assumption and totally inappropriate to even be thinking about right now. Why would Zayn even want that with him? Obviously, he just liked having his dick sucked whenever he wanted. But Liam thought they weren’t supposed to talk about that.

 

"I can buy more for myself." He tells Zayn matter of factly instead of the mess he's actually thinking about.

 

"You could just ask _her_ for one. I'm sure she's got plenty."

 

Liam narrows his eyes at him.

 

"Why would she have condoms if we're not having sex?"

 

"Just because you're not doesn't mean she isn't."

 

"Excuse you?"

 

Zayn rolls his eyes.

 

"Oh come on you have to know by now that she's sleeping around. Everyone knows."

 

The air around them suddenly feels like it's being sucked of all the moisture, drying up in Liam's mouth.

 

"... _what_..." He says slowly. Zayn makes a face at him.

 

"You didn't know?" He asks, "Huh. That's funny."

 

Liam shakes his head, disbelieving.

 

"That's really not a funny joke."

 

"I'm being deadass." Zayn insists. Liam has never heard him use that word before. He almost sounded _American_ for asplit second there. He chirps at the nearest person coming out of the lunch room, which happened to be Louis again.

 

"Oi, didn’t you have Sophie Smith or whatever the fuck her name is over yesterday?"

 

Louis stops, nodding slowly.

 

"Yeah… how do you know that?”

 

Zayn looks back at Liam shrugging his shoulders.

 

"See?"

 

Liam shakes his head like he's in a dream. No, not a dream. A Nightmare.

 

Obviously, he really didn't care if Sophia was cheating on him. They were cheating on each other really. It was just Zayn... right now. His mood was fluctuating more than ever. Cursing out even Harry of all people and everyone was afraid to even look at him sideways now. And he's just being so nonchalant about this.

 

Nonchalant about cursing out all his friends. Nonchalant about his blatant health concerns. Nonchalant about what he and Liam even _were_ to each other anymore. Just everything. Blasé, blasé. That’s Zayn, right? No. That’s _not_ Zayn. Even with him standing right in front of Liam, this isn’t Zayn.

 

"Why wouldn't you... tell me something like this?"

 

Zayn's face drops, unimpressed by Liam's expression of betrayal.

 

"This is a pretty small town. I thought everyone knew." He shrugs carelessly.

 

"Why would I still be dating her if I knew she was cheating on me?"

 

“She's still dating you and everyone knows _you're_ cheating on _her_. What's it matter?”

 

Liam holds his head for a moment, smiling like he's waiting for the punchline to an awful joke.

 

“You're fucking with me right?” he laughs although there's nothing humorous about his tone.

 

Zayn tilts his head from side to side.

 

“For the last week, I have been, yeah.” He says, sarcastically. People in the hall are starting to linger, like they're sensing some shit about to go down right now, watching Liam and Zayn air out extremely dirty laundry for the whole world to see.

 

“I find it really interesting that you suddenly want to tell everyone about that now that you know I was gonna have sex with her since I'm not doing it with anyone _else_ in this fucking school.”

 

Zayn laughs now.

 

"Okay, first of all, I don't give a fuck _who_ you're sleeping with so don't take your own stupidity out on _me_. I couldn't care less if you knew about it or not to be completely honest. It was never gonna last anyways. She doesn't even like you. She likes the idea of your pure, virgin _dick_ that she’s never actually gonna get a taste of if we’re all being genuinely honest here. If you really want me to fuck you, you could just _ask._ "

 

A small crowd has formed around them, several people doing that annoying oooh thing, instigating the drama. Liam feels them all staring and it's making his heart accelerate alarmingly. Also the fact that he has no idea who the hell he's talking to right now is also making his pulse speed up. He's being a total asshole, way worse than before and Liam can't just dismiss it like last time.

 

He shakes his head, astonished by both Zayn and himself. Himself for actually thinking whatever this is was ever gonna work. This totally unstable, confusing thing their relationship has evolved into. He knows this isn't Zayn. He said he'd been blacking out lately. Obviously, he was in the middle of an episode right now and this was why he told Liam to stay away if he wasn't himself.

 

"Something wrong bean?"

 

"Yeah..." Liam nods. "You. This is all so... _fucked up_ , Zayn. The way you've been. You said you were gonna get help… I know a doctor that deals with this kind of thing--"

 

"What? I don’t need help for anything. What would I need help for?" He cuts Liam off, looking perplexed. That makes Liam swallow thickly, feeling his heart kick up even more when he realises Zayn's eyes have been black since he attacked Louis. This actually _wasn’t Zayn_.

 

"You know, luckily I really like you so I'm not gonna fuck around listening to your _nonsense_ any longer because I just might do something I’d really fucking _hate_ to do,” he says suddenly, backing away from Liam, who is totally thrown off by that admission. Actual whiplash.

 

“What? Wait, where are you going?”

 

Zayn turns back around briefly.

 

“I’m _starving_. I think maybe I'll give Louis another chance and take him out for lunch. Given the choices around here, he's looking pretty good right now." He says, glaring as he turns away and roughly shoves several people out of his way as he goes in the direction Louis went.

 

"Have fun playing with yourself alone tonight."

 

Okay. That really hit a nerve in Liam’s chest, feeling it pang tightly. Whiplash turns into a slap in the face.

 

He goes home early after that, without Zayn, feeling sick to his stomach himself. He ends up actually throwing up a few times from how much he’s been gorging his face lately.

 

Like he's always said, the whole world could be ending but as long as he and Zayn were okay, none of that mattered. Zayn was _not_ okay.

 

He was so all over the place right now, it was scaring him. He was sick and has all the symptoms of mental illness. Liam knows it when he sees it. He says he's on a diet but Liam knows he's not eating at all. His personality was fucked. Now if anyone confronts him about his behaviour he completely lashes out. Liam feels like he's watching him spiral hopelessly.

 

He looks into the mirror in his bathroom after throwing up, looking himself dead in the eye for the first time in forever, forcing himself into a dull numbness. Suddenly, he isn’t even there anymore. The mirror is empty and he’s successfully made his brain cut off anything he feels from the chaos consuming their lives.

 

It was actually making him angry now the more he replayed what Zayn said to him, his voice echoing in his head like a broken record. Even if it wasn’t really Zayn, it was still part of him and if he wants to play this game with Liam, he could do it too. He finds himself going right across from his house. This virgin thing was ending tonight.

 

  
*

 

  
While Liam heads over to Sophia’s house later on that night, Louis Tomlinson heads to their local park to meet up with Zayn so they can talk. It feels a little eerie, when he's sitting there on a bench waiting for him because there's no one else here but him and an ominous fog. People were still taking the curfew seriously but, obviously, Zayn didn't. It was his idea to meet here.

 

Louis wouldn’t’ve agreed if it wasn't important. Zayn's just been acting so sporadic lately and so many of his friends were concerned. Somebody had to talk to him. Everyone decided that somebody had to be Louis since he's the one that usually gets through to him.

 

As Louis waits on a bench, under a dim light post, a cacophony of crows squawk behind him, fluttering from the trees, making him jump. At least 3 of them gather around him near the bench, standing there, almost like they're waiting too.

 

Louis taps his leg impatiently feeling like he's been sitting here for hours. According to his watch, it's been about 20 minutes. He waits for 10 more minutes, eyeing the creepy black birds that eye him right back until another sound in the woods behind him makes him jump again, like something just passed by. Louis turns around, looking into the woods, staring into the void in its opening. It feels like something in there is staring right back at him.

 

Another squawk from beside him startles him again. Louis looks at the dumb bird, scowling.

 

“I haven't got any food,” he tells it. The crow caws again, cocking its head to the side at him. Louis snorts, shaking his head.

 

“Talking to a fucking bird in a deserted park.” he says to himself.

 

He laughs shaking his head as he stands up.

 

" _Figures he'd stand me up_."

 

When he tries to walk away, more birds gather around the path. Louis hesitates for a minute as they stare at each other. The crows black eyes never leave his. It squawks at him again. Louis looks around again, trying to see if Zayn is coming from anywhere nearby. The fog makes it impossible to see down the trail.

 

Louis carries on, deciding to go the other way to get the hell out of this park, wondering why he even bothered at all. Zayn hates him. He supposes he deserves it.

 

Even more black birds emerge onto the path when he tries to leave again, squawking at him. Louis backs up, swallowing as his pulse kicks up a notch as he looks at them. Their eyes were full of something that crawls up his arms, black as the night itself. Almost like Zayn’s when he tried to kill Louis earlier.

 

When he turns around again, he's met with Zayn lounging leisurely on the bench and his heart almost stops.

 

"JESUS!" He shouts as he holds his chest. Zayn leans his head back up, looking at Louis with a bleak smile.

 

"Zayn what the _fuck_ , I've been waiting here for ages!"

 

Zayn sits up then, stretching his arms above his head.

 

"Have you?" He yawns. "I've been sitting on this bench for as long as I can remember."

 

Louis smiles.

 

"Fashionably late?"

 

Zayn shrugs, sitting up and pulling Louis towards him by his belt loop holes.

 

"Didn't need to stress over my outfit when we're not gonna be wearing many clothes." He smiles. Louis' mouth pops open, surprised. He hasn't wanted to do that in a long time. He looks around sceptically.

 

"Out here? The bloody park?"

 

"No one's gonna see. There's a curfew, remember?" Zayn starts to unbutton Louis’ pants

 

" _They're all afraid of me_." He murmurs, dragging his lips along Louis' v-line. Louis shivers.

 

"Maybe they’re all afraid of you because you’re a fucking asshole." Louis utters as Zayn runs his hands up his shirt.

 

"I was hoping we could....go someplace warm, so we... could.... _talk_." Louis gets out but, he's already letting Zayn take his shirt off and pulling Louis down on the bench as he crawls on top of him.

 

"We'll keep each other warm." Zayn whispers, licking into Louis' mouth as he succumbs to the temptation. It never took that much with Louis.

 

Meanwhile, at the hospital, Harry visits Niall again. He'd been getting up recently, able to walk on his own and everything. The doctors said it was a miracle. His liver and kidney were half gone when he got here, chewed right through and he bled out a lot before they got there. They say he should've died within minutes but, somehow, they healed completely on their own. Even then shattered bones healed up remarkably fast. Meds didn't react to his system at all.

 

"I'll probably be able to leave next week after they run a few more tests." He tells Harry, which kind of makes him sad. Since Niall's whole house burned down, he had to go back and live with his family in Ireland. He’s been here since he was 8.

 

Harry figured he should be happy for him. He was getting the hell out of this horrible town. Harry was thinking about getting out too. He and Liam always used to say they were gonna travel the world together. Maybe after this tragic year was over and they finish sixth form, they could. He’d have to save up money of course but, Harry knew he was getting out of this town somehow. Just like Niall was.

 

He'd been updating Niall on everything happening. All the funerals, Tom being killed by probably the same person that attacked Niall, the curfew being in effect now. The virus plaguing the teens here... Niall slept through a fucking hurricane.

 

"You know Zayn and Liam started hooking up." Harry laughs. Niall grins wide.

 

“They don't think anyone knows. Not that they're very _discreet_ about it.”

 

"Fucking finally!"

 

Harry nods as they laugh. Niall had been waiting for that to happen too.

 

"Zayn must be over the moon."

 

Harry's smile falters.

 

"Yeah... it's actually kind of really complicated."

 

"How so?"

 

"Well, Liam's dead set on sleeping with Sophia now and Zayn's been just... out of it."

 

"Well, if Liam and Sophia are still together then, of course, he's out of it. You should've seen him at the party after Liam went and danced with her."

 

Harry's brows come together as he listens.

 

"What happened now?"

 

"Z was _so_ furious when he saw them all over each other. He’s a really jealous guy deep down but he usually hides it in sarcasm, you know? Not this time, though. It was hilarious. He was just staring at them. Then Sophia start yanking Liam's chain," Niall motions a handjob on his bed

 

"And it was like he couldn't look away. He went through all that trouble to get that horrible band to play at my house just for Liam, only to have it blow up in his face." Niall tuts, then frowns.

 

"Well, I guess it blew up in all our faces."

 

Harry blinks at him. He always knew that Zayn was in love with Liam in theory but... it never occurred to him that he like liked him. Liam, yeah for sure but Zayn? The real life concept never clicked.

 

"Zayn got them to play at your house?" Harry repeats. " _How_?"

 

Niall shrugs

 

"He's got some handy connections I guess. They had a gig here already but somehow they ended up getting cancelled. Probably had to suck off a few people in the process but, you know. Anything for his Lima Bean."

 

Harry grimaces.

 

"Okay. One, that is _disgusting_. Two, how the fuck did I not know ANY of this was happening?”

 

"Well. One, sucking dick for the greater good of humanity is God’s gift to us and don't your dare put something down until you've tried it,"

 

Harry laughs at that. He’s just like Zayn so there’s no wonder why they’re friends.

 

"And two, you've got a big fucking mouth and probably would've told Liam everything before we even got finished planning it."

 

Harry nods his head from side to side.

 

“Alright, I could see that happening,” He admits.

 

“I guess since they’re hooking up, I might as well tell you now…” Niall sighs. Harry looks back up at him.

 

“Zayn did all that because he wanted to make this big romantic gesture and tell Liam he loved him after High Tide played that song Inferno. Not like a best friend, brotherly type of love. _Love_ love. Cause you know that’s like their song or whatever. That’s why I had to make sure Liam came after the game. When I told Zayn he was staying the night at Sophia’s he went over there himself and dragged Liam to my house. He was _really_ freaking out about the whole thing, because his girlfriend ended up coming and he was already doubting himself and didn’t want Liam to flip out but, I convinced him it was a great idea to just tell Liam, even if he didn’t plan on going anywhere more than friends with him, cause hiding your feeling for so long can be damaging y’know? But… I guess that was the worst advice ever.”

  
Harry gapes at him. He never would’ve guessed…

 

“Why did he never… _tell me?”_

 

“He didn’t even outright admit this to me. 3 years ago when Liam joined football, Zayn always made me tell him whenever anything happened to Liam in the locker rooms so he could kick their ass. I figured it out on my own and he didn’t deny it when I asked so I’ve been doing small favours for him ever since. If Liam is still seeing Sophia, I can guarantee you Zayn is going insane.”

 

Harry felt awful for Zayn now. All those times the three of them would plan to hang out and Liam would show up with his girlfriend… it must’ve been torture.

 

"No wonder Zayn got so fucked up and left with the band." Harry murmurs. Niall tilts his head sideways.

 

"Zayn didn't leave with the band."

 

Harry looks at Niall sceptically

 

"Yeah, he did. Liam and I were losing our shit when we watched him go in their van. We even tried to follow them but it was like they just disappeared.”

 

"Really?"

 

Harry nods slowly.

 

"Huh. You know, I inhaled a tonne of smoke. But I swear Zayn was still at my house when I woke up."

 

"What?"

 

Niall covers his face laughing.

 

"Okay. You're gonna die when I tell you this but, when I passed out, I had a... sort of wet dream about me and Zayn."

 

Harry snorts

 

"Who hasn't?"

 

Niall raises his eyebrows suspiciously as he smirks.

 

"Harry... are you admitting something right now?"

 

Harry feels a blush creeping up his neck as he glares.

 

"Just finish what you were saying." He demands. Niall laughs right before he recounts a brutally explicit dream he had about waking up to Zayn pulling him from smouldering wood and ash before mounting him, until it got violent with Zayn almost crushing him until he passed out, last memory being bitten in the neck.

 

Niall scratches that part of his neck after he tells Harry about his dream. Crazy thing was, there was actually a _huge_ bite mark across Niall neck where it met with his shoulder.

 

Harry comes over to him to examine it. It didn't look like a human or any animal around here could've done this. It was like shark bite meets a chainsaw.

 

Harry looks at Niall suddenly, his eyes wide as he realises something.

 

"Are you sure you were dreaming??" Harry quickly asks him. Niall shrugs, taken off guard with Harry's sudden alarm.

 

"Of course I'm sure. I mean… I thought it was real until they told me it was a cannibal. Obviously, I was a little out of it myself."

 

"Niall!" Harry covers his face, pushing back his curls in frustration "Then why did you tell the police you didn't remember anything?"

 

"Why would I tell the police about a sex dream?"

 

"Because you remember being pulled out of the fire and you're the only person who saw anything! Don't you know what eye witness means? _Zayn_ pulled you out of the fire! Liam said Zayn showed up at his house covered in ash and blood. That means he had to have been gone back to the house after it burned down." Harry looks up suddenly, face going white.

 

" _Oh my god._.."

 

“What? Harry, what's wrong?”

 

Before Harry came to the hospital, he called Liam to apologise for earlier and ask if he'd come along too but Liam informed him that he and Sophia had plans and not to bother Zayn because he was going out to eat with Louis.

 

A few gears start connecting in Harry’s head, flashing back to the day Tom died. Zayn asked him a barrage of seemingly random questions about him that day. When Harry asked him why he was so curious, Zayn just smiled and said he was taking him out for lunch. That was Zayn’s way of saying he was planning on having sex with him.

 

Then they saw Zayn naked in the lake behind the woods where Tom was fucked and eaten alive. Maybe he _did_ take Tom out for lunch that day. It couldn't all be a coincidence that Zayn has been the only one at the scene of both incidents. Obviously, Niall remembers Zayn fucking him before he passed out. Harry sprints to get his jacket on, hastily leaving the hospital.

 

“Where are you going?” Niall asks, watching him frantically getting his things.

 

“I have to find Liam before--” _before someone else dies._

 

That someone might be Louis.

 

Niall waits for him to finish but, Harry doesn't. He just leaves, not wanting to scare Niall too.

 

“I'll be back tomorrow.” He tosses over his shoulder as he runs off.

 

Niall remembers Zayn trying to eat him. That was undoubtedly not a wet dream. Which means Liam was not hallucinating when Zayn came to his house that night covered in the evidence. If Zayn was really the last person to see both Tom and Niall, then they were all in danger.

 

  
*

 

  
When Liam gets to Sophia's, she's not as excited as Liam thought she would be about Liam professing his desire to give her his virginity.

 

In fact, she almost seems bored of the entire ordeal now. But she takes him up to her room anyways. Liam doesn’t care if she’s actually into it or not. He’s not either. He just wants it to be done already. This wasn’t exactly how he’s always pictured it to be, with neither him nor his partner really giving a damn but, whatever. This wasn’t about love. This was sex just for the sake of sex.

 

He doesn't bother with foreplay this time. No cunnilingus or fondling or fingering or anything he usually did to avoid actually having sex. Straight to the point.

 

Zayn was right. Sophia has a huge box of condoms at her disposal, half of them gone already. It doesn't bother Liam in the least bit. What does bother him is that Zayn is probably out there somewhere doing the same thing with Louis. Actually, he knows Zayn is out there with Louis. He can feel it.

 

While Sophia puts the condom on him, she pauses when she notices his expression.

 

"Are you spacing out on me?" She groans. Liam blinks at her, seemingly dazed.

 

"Huh?" He looks down in between their bodies. So... they were doing this. Liam swallows.

 

" _Oi_ ," Sophia brings his chin up so he'll look at her.

 

"You’re not gonna enjoy this if you’re not paying any attention."

 

Liam leans down and kisses her. He knows he isn't gonna enjoy this either way. He can just feel so deeply that something was wrong more than just the fact that he can barely get it up with her. But he's doing it anyway. In his ear, she whispers this time.

 

 _"I'm not him but, I’ll mean something to you._ "

 

Liam squeezes his eyes shut, biting his lip as he goes to align himself. No. She's not him. Of course, she knows. Everyone knows.

 

She pulls his face up again.

 

_"Look into my eyes."_

 

He opens his, doing just that to look into the familiar brown eyes with the freckle on the side that he's missed so much. So much it hurts. Liam laughs, his head dropping onto dream Zayn's shoulder. His brain was shit. It's still not him.

 

"There you are." dream Zayn laughs too.

 

Liam actually starts crying. Not sobbing but, he's laughing against dream Zayn's shoulder and tears are coming out because he knows he's not really here.

 

He knows he's never gonna be here ever again and it almost makes him angry. Like, maybe if he had stopped Zayn from leaving in the first place, the very second he heard those creeps talking about him at the party, or maybe even stopped himself from leaving the first time he kissed Zayn, none of this shit would be happening.

 

"I can turn over if that'd be easier--"

 

"No." Liam stops him, sitting up suddenly, pulling his knees up with a new prerogative.

 

"I wanna see you." He says, gruff as he pushes in more, stopping immediately just before he is all the way inside when he feels how tightly clenched it is. His mouth falling open with his eyes going a little wide. He pulls out before he can even get half way in.

 

"What's wrong?"

 

Liam's chest heaves as he lets go of dream Zayn's legs.

 

"I'm sorry," he gasps before almost laughing again as he rests his forehead against dream Zayn's "I'm gonna bust in like 2 seconds."

 

Dream Zayn actually does laugh, leaning up briefly to kiss him before shaking his head.

 

"No, you won't baby."

 

In one swift movement, dream Zayn flips them over, mounting Liam with his hands on his chest, realigning himself before he starts rolling his hips into it, slowly, nodding his head back towards the ceiling.

 

Liam blinks up at him, feeling absolutely nothing. The more he thinks about Zayn, though, the more real it starts to look, until he's suddenly actually looking at Zayn.

 

He's not in Sophia's room. He's on a bench, in a park and Liam is watching him fuck Louis senseless. Above his head, the ceiling starts to crack. Liam stares at it in awe at first, just taking in everything that's happening around him, feeling like he's on drugs or losing his damn mind until the ceiling starts leaking. Liam squints at it at first. He's not wearing his glasses but, he knows what he's looking at now. It's blood.

 

His breath starts coming out a bit quicker. When it drips on him, he instinctively wipes his face but there's nothing on his hand when he looks at it. He’s never hallucinated this hard before. He's not hallucinating. He's left his body again and he can't feel a goddamn thing. But he can see everything and he's in two places at once. They're just overlapping each other now.

 

On top of him, Zayn's entire face changes. His mouth opens up impossibly wide as he looks up at the ceiling, Liam can actually hear his skull cracking open wider. When he lets out a blood-curdling screech, Liam covers his mouth, all too terrified when Zayn looks down at him again. Only it's not Zayn at all. It's an actual demonic creature.

 

Liam flinches when it leans down and tears into his guts. Well, not his guts... Louis' guts. But he's still right there watching. All he can do is watch in horror, listening to Louis' screaming.

 

Suddenly, he's back in his body and it appears that Sophia is having an orgasm on top of him now. Liam just… he fakes it. They've been doing this for far too long and he knows he's never gonna finish so he fakes it in what is probably the worst acting performance of his career so she'll get off of him and he can sit up.

 

He’s starting to lose his breath again as he pushes off the bed. He can't even say anything to Sophia, snagging on his clothes and gasping for air like he was the one being attacked. He reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out his new inhaler, pumping it as he flees the house. Sophia calls after him but, it's useless. Liam is already gone.

 

He jumps into his car and just drives, almost hysterical after somehow watching Zayn turn into a monster and eat someone. He knows it was real this time. He's not even sure where he's going. Not to the park, that's for damn sure. As he's speeding down a deserted street, sirens come behind him.

 

“ _Shit_ ,” he mutters, pulling over. He forgot about the dumb curfew.

 

At the park, Zayn mourns over his friend's mutilation, gagging and choking on his tears as he hugs Louis’ dead body into him. He's covered in his blood and he just wishes he was dead too.

 

Suddenly, he finds himself tearing apart the park bench, ripping the metal legs right out of the ground and going to plunge it into his own chest. He knows if he dies, so will what’s living inside of him and then everyone in Manningtree will be safe. Just before he can, he loses control over his body again. It goes through his stomach instead of his heart.

 

“ _Fuck_!” He groans, pulling it out and snapping the metal in half then throwing it out of his hands.

 

He looks to the side briefly and spits out his own blood to the ground.

 

“I fucking _hate_ this body. You are so annoying,” he grumbles to himself as he dips his hands into Louis, drinking his blood and finishing his meal until he's completely full.

 

_“Don't get suicidal on me now.”_

 

After he's done, he dusts off his hands as if that will clear up the fact that he’s covered in blood.

 

“Why don't we visit that adorable boy toy of yours? I should probably apologise for hurting his feelings.”

 

When he's all done, he disappears into the woods, leaving the carnage behind for someone else to clean up.

 

Meanwhile, Harry is speeding away after leaving the hospital on a dirt road so as not to get caught out after curfew. His mind is reeling, replaying the entire month of chaos. Of course, they knew something was seriously wrong with Zayn but, he could've never known it was this wrong.

 

He didn't know how he was gonna break it to Liam that the love of his life has turned into a cannibal but, in all honesty, they were lucky to be alive. Especially Liam. All the time he’s been spending with him… he could've been his next meal.

 

Ahead of him, the fog picks up, a bit thicker the further he gets down the road but he doesn't slow down, instead just turning on his brights.

 

In front of the car, an animal emerges from the woods that Harry has no time to avoid. He slams on the breaks, making the car screech until he crashes into it. The airbags deployed, knocking the wind out of him.

 

After almost passing out, Harry sits up, groaning. When he moves the airbags out of the way, he's mortified when he realises he actually hit a person, splayed out on his windshield with their neck twisted at an unnatural angle, bones jutting out the back. Even more when that person lifts their head up to look at Harry, turning out to be Zayn, covered in blood, all over his face and body.

 

A sinister smile stretches across his face, revealing sharp fangs, dripping in red. His eyes look totally black. It’s so shocking, all Harry can do is stare. He can barely even recognise him but he knows it's Zayn and he's stunned into silence.

 

He snaps his neck back into place like it's nothing then moves like he's gonna break the windshield with his fist.

 

Harry screams as he floors it, sending Zayn tumbling off his car. He doesn't slow down until he's home, running inside like his life depended on it. Liam was gonna die when Harry tells him everything tomorrow.

 

Around the corner, Liam gets a police escort back home. They don't give him a ticket or anything. Just a warning. Even with the escort home, he's still completely on edge as he shakily drags himself up to his room. He keeps replaying the image of the monster ripping into Louis over and over.

 

It's dark, he's still exhausted after having another asthma attack, he's pretty sure he's just somehow witnessed a murder from a million miles away... he just needs the night to be over. He needs the last month of his life to be over. It almost feels empty in his room without Zayn in it now.

 

He takes a cold shower, trying to numb his entire body since he's too wired to calm down. After a half hour of standing under the shower head like a zombie, he gets out and dries off finally once he can't feel his toes anymore.

 

He doesn't bother with turning on any lights, pulling on his boxers and belly flopping onto his bed. Except, he doesn't belly flop onto his bed. He falls on top of a big lump under the covers that reveals itself to be Zayn.

 

"You're home!" He chirps, sitting up. In a frantic attempt to get away, Liam falls out onto the floor, being sent into another fit. Zayn sits up and stops him from trying to run away, putting his hands up innocently as he shushed him.

 

“Please stop _screaming_ , bloody hell…”

 

Liam stands up and turns on the light, looking at Zayn like he's watching a horror movie. He’s back in perfect health, plush skin and bright eyes. False eyes that don't belong to him.

 

"What are you doing here?" Liam carefully asks him. Zayn smiles.

 

"What do you mean what am I doing here? What have I been doing here?"

 

It's a rhetorical question. He's been doing a _lot_ of things here. When Liam doesn't respond, Zayn stands up on the bed on his knees so he's at eye level with Liam.

 

"Do I need to _remind_ you?" He reaches out slowly, hooking one finger on Liam's boxers and pulls him closer to him.

 

“I really wanna make it up to you for being so awful to you earlier. I can get a bit hangry sometimes, you know?”

 

Liam stares at him cautiously as he runs his thumb over them.

 

" _Anyways_ , I'm full now and less of a twat. So… you wouldn't mind if we skipped the sleeping bit of our little routine would you Lima?"

 

Liam shakes his head, keeping himself alert and his face clean of any kind of alarm even though he feels like crying.

 

"We don't have anything. _You're_ not Zayn."

 

He laughs at that, his head nodding back briefly before smirking at Liam.

 

"Last time I checked, that's what it says on my I.D. babe."

 

"You can walk around here pretending all you want. I know my best friend when I see him." Liam spits sourly, pulling away from him.

 

“You’re not even _human_.”

 

He snorts, staring Liam down for a tense moment.

 

The lights flicker in the room briefly. In one split second of it being dark, he vanishes from the bed in the blink of an eye. Liam whips around, his heart beating wildly as he finds him standing behind him, making Liam stumble back, taken off guard with how fast he moves.

 

His eyes are _gone_. Not all pupil. His sockets are actually empty. They've never been like that before and it's a real life gore horror in front of him. Like someone mutilated Zayn's face by taking out his eyes.

 

" _You couldn't tell who I was this morning in the shower when my tongue had your weak little knees shaking_.” He whispers slyly in Liam's ear, hovering his hand over his bare chest. Liam sucks in a sharp breath, keeping his composure even if his insides feel like they're rotting away with that revelation.

 

“ _Or in your car yesterday or under your sheets the day before that or against your wardrobe before that or in my hand the day before that…_ ” he continues, making Liam feel less and less of a sane human being.

 

“Don’t you remember me telling you our eyes aren’t the same colour?”

 

It's the first time he's actually talked to Liam with him admitting that he's not Zayn but it's not the first time Liam's known who it really was. Before, he could just tell. Not just from the way he talks. His entire aura changes. That heat that radiates off of him that makes Liam sweat and the smell of something he still can't quite distinguish burning… he knew that wasn't Zayn. Now, he wishes he would’ve just kept pretending.

 

“He doesn't like it when I touch you but, I _honestly_ can't help myself.” The monster disguised as Zayn leans in close “I love _devouring_ you.”

 

Liam closes his eyes briefly. Painfully. Of course, the real Zayn doesn't like touching him. God, this was all so fucked up. The lights go off completely then, the only light coming from the full moon outside the window. His eyes don’t even reflect the glow of it, absorbing the light like a black hole. He looks terrifying in the dark like this. A creepiness pulls hot in the air, making it feel too thick and humid to even really breathe.

 

[Human.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t7SclAXoQw)

 

“O _f_ _c_ ourse I a _m_ hu _ma_ n,” he says slowly, his real voice leaking out something unholy. He still sounds like Zayn. But… evil. Liam backs away from him a little. He looks over his arms, at all Zayn’s tattoos swirling together on a canvas to make new images on his skin, running his hand over them admiringly.

 

“I am _ **flesh** _ and _t_ he _i_ nk st _aini_ ng it,” His voice distorts, dropping into a lower pitch like when you slow down a song.

 

 **“I am bone,”** His head twitches abnormally, looking like a glitch for a split second as he continues to look over his body.

 

“ **I am sweat… flaws and scars… and blood in these veins…** ” He goes on, stalking towards Liam, whose breath is getting shorter and shorter. A tear spills out on Liam’s cheek as he watches his body contort like Zayn’s form is threatening to collapse on itself. When he gazes at Liam, he’s a short hair’s distance away.

 

 ** _“I am the soul behind these eyes_**.”

 

Well, seeing as there's nothing behind his eyes, Liam understands that means he doesn't have a soul. Liam closes his eyes, shaking as it’s suddenly the night of the fire all over again.

 

“ _ **Look at me**_.” He commands, so Liam obeys, opening his eyes again.

 

Liam pulls back even more when he almost brushes their lips together, stepping back too far and falling onto his bed. He slowly climbs on top of him, keeping his void eyes locked on Liam's. Liam's breath comes up even shorter as he feels something reaching into his body.

 

It’s just like the night of the fire, except this time it doesn't just sweep through him. It grabs onto something deep within him and he gets that familiar feeling of having no control over what he does because right now as he stares into its non-existent eyes, all he can think about is wanting it to tear him apart, his fear and terror being overpowered by lust stronger than he's ever felt it before.

  
"The difference between me and Zayn is I already know everything you want, coiling up in your little virgin body, exactly how you want it and I don't have to touch you to give it to you…. or even finish if I want you to." He bites into Liam's pants and drags it down with his teeth, keeping Liam entranced with his gaze, arousing him.

 

"The touching bit just makes it more fun."

 

His hand hovers over Liam's fully hard dick and his tongue sticks out, just barely grazing the tip. Liam squeezes his eyes shut as his stomach goes taunt, refusing to let himself be taken over by the lusty haze again. But honestly... it's like standing in the middle of a highway and refusing for cars to hit you. His hips move up a little, needing to release the tension building up inside him.

 

"You want me to suck you?" He asks. Liam bites his lip.

 

“It's okay. I want to do it again.”

 

That much was fucking _clear_. Liam finally nods, wordlessly.

 

"I’m not a rapist. l need you to use your words babe."

 

"Yes." Liam gasps. He can't help it. He wants it so bad he thinks he could just bust from the thought of Zayn's mouth around him again.

 

"I want you. Please just... just touch me.”

 

He smiles then, pleased with Liam giving in.

 

He licks up Liam’s length like it’s candy, taking the head into his mouth, stroking the middle with slow, long pumps. He swallows more and more with ease, turning Liam's insides into melted pools of heaven, relaxing his jaw until he's deep throating Liam completely and Liam's feeling himself slide in and out of his throat. As his head bobs, Liam's hands ball up tightly, grabbing the sheets on either side of him while he mewls.

 

After building him up a bit more, he stops sucking right before Liam can cum. Liam groans as he lets his dick slap back on his stomach. He climbs up to sit on top of Liam, pulling down his own pants a little.

 

“ _W-what are you d-doing_?” Liam stutters.

 

He doesn't say anything now, not even needing to open himself up before he slides himself onto Liam's dick with relaxed ease. He's not crushing him this time either. It feels like he weighs nothing.

 

His hands lay on Liam's chest and his eyes close with his head nodded back towards the ceiling, rolling his hips into Liam, racking up waves pure bliss in his body. Liam's never felt this much stimulation in his life. This is the total opposite of feeling out of his body.

 

He feels amazing. Too amazing. He knows this isn't normal. Feeling this much pleasure at once. He can't even feel his heart beating. He actually thinks it's gonna kill him despite how good it feels… because he's felt it a little before.

 

It was the same thing when they attacked each other after the lightning incident. Liam was willing to die to keep feeling him in that moment, and it's happening all over again but with them actually _fucking_. Only this time it's not wild and untamed. He feels like he's submitting his whole body to him. Liam doesn't want to submit to _him_.

 

Liam sits up suddenly, pulling its legs around his waist as he kissed him. Instead of sweet roses, he tastes blood. But it doesn't matter because right now, it's the best thing Liam's ever tasted, licking in his mouth like he can’t stand not tasting him.

 

He laughs a little when Liam bites his lip, wrapping his arms behind Liam's neck and holding the back of his head gently while Liam holds his waist so he’ll stay securely in his lap as he continues to ride him.

 

“You’re still a virgin right?” he asks in between kissing Liam as he rolls his hips achingly slow for absolute filth, lifting his ass up slightly then back down, over and over in a steady motion.

 

If Liam wasn’t feeling anything before, he was feeling everything now. Every nerve in his body feels like it's being ignited into action and there’s no way he's leaving his body this time. He wants to feel everything. Even if it kills him.

 

Liam shakes his head, taking off Zayn’s shirt and kissing down his chest, holding his hips as they move into him.

 

“Oh yes, you are. _I can smell it on you._ ” he purrs in Liam's ear. “That girl couldn't even make you cum, poor thing. Don't worry, I know you don't wanna be a virgin anymore. I’m gonna fix that.”

 

Liam wants him to just stop talking now. He stands up, able to hold him up with his hands under his knees until he's pressing him against his wall, wasting no time pulling both their pants all the way down, beginning to bang him into it. It shuts him up, that's for sure. Liam just figures if he's about to die right now, he's not gonna die a fucking virgin.

 

His head never nods back to crack open Zayn’s skull, though. Nor does he ever start to crush Liam at any point like Liam's waiting for him to do. He's not hurting him at all. He's docile, letting Liam lead now. His eyes stay squeezed shut as he holds onto Liam with his arms slung lazily over his shoulders whimpering every time Liam thrusts.

 

“ _Fuck, you’re so… tight_.” Liam breathes.

 

“ _Thanks. You’re pretty cool too_.” He pants in response, his voice strained.

 

_“For a virgin anyways.”_

 

Liam would laugh if he could. Finally, after hitting it from a different angle, Liam feels himself brush up against a little bump inside of him, making him clench around Liam. He winces, pushing his hands against Liam to push him off.

 

“No, wait _don't_ -” his voice dies in his throat when Liam hits the sensitive spot again, making him gasp out the most beautiful sound he's ever heard, choking out Liam's name.

 

His eyes spring open, something vulnerable and soft in them as his eyes have returned now. The black is reduced to the normal size of Zayn's pupil.

 

“ _Lima_ ,” he breathes again. Liam just knows it's Zayn. Really Zayn. There no doubt about it.

 

Liam finishes almost instantly, his head falling against Zayn's forehead.

 

“Don’t stop,” Zayn pants, holding tighter onto Liam.

 

“ _Please don't stop._ ”

 

Liam doesn’t. Zayn buries his face in Liam's neck, breathing heavily against him as he picks up speed again, pounding into him, never losing his hard-on. Zayn’s dick is leaking between them, hitting the sensitive bundle of nerves every time now. Zayn is so close… and so oversensitized, Liam could be barely moving at all and his body would still be staggering just from the pressure. Liam grips Zayn's hard-on rubbing against his stomach and starts to jerk him off so he'll finish, knowing he's about to again himself.

 

Against Liam’s neck, Zayn actually bites down into him, sharp teeth searing right through his flesh and Liam thinks it's finally happening. He's about to die. Zayn's enamel is so red hot it melts into his skin, something scorching seeping into him. Liam cries out in pain, climaxing, again, just from the shock of it. His body jolts one last time just hard enough for Zayn to finish all over their stomachs in between them, going limp in Liam's arms.

 

Liam pulls out right after, dropping Zayn on the floor immediately, pulling his clothes back on, all that adrenaline draining out as soon as they break contact, allowing full panic to finally activate. Zayn makes a muffled groan as he watches Liam hurriedly putting his clothes back on, looking like he's a few seconds away from having a mental breakdown.

 

Liam grimaces as he feels his neck carefully where it's throbbing painfully, the wound gaping wide. The heat has already cooled off. There's no blood on his hand when he looks at it. Just something black oozing out. It crawls all over his hand like a gooey spider. Liam yells, flapping his hand around to get it off.

 

Whatever it is, it’s crawling around in his body now. And there's a _lot_.

 

Zayn sits up against the wall, pulling on his own clothes.

 

"I'm sorry I bit you, I had to," Zayn says quietly. Liam glares at him.

 

"You're sorry for _biting_ me!? That's what you're gonna say after everything?"

 

"I told you to stay away from me--"

 

"How could I if I don't know what the fuck is going on Zayn? _You_ _came here_ , every fucking day, not the other way around acting like a bipolar sex addict and I've been feeling like I'm losing my goddamn mind! We just... we just..." Liam can't even finish the sentence, unable to grasp the concept of what just happened. It was strange how Liam could silently accept that they were blowing each other every morning but having actual sex? Nope. He couldn't deal.

 

It's happening again, the feeling that he can't breathe. He holds his heaving chest, going towards his nightstand where he put his inhaler but Zayn is instantly there already, picking it up and handing it to him.

 

Liam snatches it out of his hand, not even flinching when he does stuff like move at impossible speeds anymore. He crawls into his bed and pumps air back into his lungs although it's not even asthma. The shit in his body is making him feel weird as it moves around inside him and collects in the bottom of his gut solidly.

 

Zayn patiently waits for him to calm down, sitting cross-legged on the very edge of the bed.

 

"So what now? Is the other you gonna kill me too now?" Liam asks shakily. Zayn shakes his head.

 

"No. And that was _not_ me. I don't have a split personality and I'm not bipolar. I know you saw what we did and I _really_ wish you hadn't but… I just need to explain this to you like I should've when I had a chance."

 

Liam keeps his knees drawn up to his chest.

 

"I'm tired of keeping secrets from you. I guess I just… didn't want you to be scared of me or have you look at me like I'm some kind of sick freak. But it’s too late for that now so I might as well just stop acting like nothing's wrong with me." He sighs. Liam's guard falters a little, unclenching himself from the fetal position.

 

“I don't think you're a freak Z.”

 

Zayn shrugs.

 

“Well, you should. It still lives in me. Like actually alive, not just in my head and I can't control him whenever I want.”

 

Liam figures he's talking about the thing that emerged from his face before he… ate Louis.

 

Liam watches him look away for a moment. On the back of his neck, there's a huge black blob covering the entirety of it, trailing down his back, disappearing into his shirt. It looks horribly painful like something is rotting away just underneath the skin. It kinda looks like his neck is _broken_. Liam gasps at the sight of it. The rest of him was seemingly flawless and glowy.

 

“Zayn… what,”

 

He looks back at Liam.

 

“What _happened_ to you?”

 

He musters up all his breath, shoving the nervousness away. This was Liam. He couldn't scare him away if he tried.

 

"The night of the fire, I got really fucked up. My mind just… wasn't _there_ after High Tide started playing Inferno. Eggsy just kept telling me to listen to him over and over. After a while, that's all I could hear. It's this old thing they call “manipulation” or some shit musicians or witches do to hypnotise people. After I left with them, they drove into the woods and I couldn't even talk to say stop or see anything in the dark. They tied me to the ground after and I just remember thinking they were gonna fucking rape me. I wanted to cry for help but, they all surrounded me and stabbed me a billion times and all I could do was lay there and take it.”

 

Liam closes his eyes, feeling tears well up.

 

“It turns out High Tide is one of those evil occult groups that call themselves witches and worship satan. They only came here because this land is supposed to be some kind of meeting ground for the devil and they needed to sacrifice a virgin from this town like how they used to do back in like the 17th or whatever century, so they'd be granted whatever they wanted, which is apparently to become a really successful band. They do it once every other century, sacrifice a human to keep their promise to whatever evil shit they made a deal with that cursed this town 400 years ago. And they chose _me_."

 

Liam frowns in confusion

 

"Why _you_?"

 

Zayn glares at him suddenly.

 

 **"Because you told them I was a fucking virgin you DICK**!" He snaps as his eyes flash dark menacingly. His voice _booms_ , sounding like multiple people talking at once and his body jerks again as his neck contorts like it might twist around, cracking bones. Liam flinches, immediately cradling back into himself. And… Zayn’s gone again. It sends a sick chill down Liam's spine.

 

" _Anyways_ ," he rolls his eyes, his voice returning to normal. The crack Liam heard was actually Zayn's neckbone. It’s snapped back in place, the rotting skin on his neck clears up and heals over completely to reveal his fantail tattoo he has there, perfectly intact. He can't even gape at it in awe over the fear of what's sitting on his bed now.

 

"They made their little sacrifice like good little agents of satan and went on their merry way."

 

Liam winces at the mental image. They sacrificed him to a _demon_.

 

 _“They killed you,”_ he whispers, his eyes welling up again as he bit his lip. It laughs briefly. One of those twisted laughs that should only be reserved for those psychotic horror movie villains. Okay, maybe it's not a sick laugh. He just sounds like Zayn but to Liam, it’s sick because he knows it's not him.

 

"I'm still here aren't I?"

 

Liam doesn't say anything because no, he's not still here. He can almost instantly tell when it's Zayn he's talking to now. Even if he was only back for 10 minutes. Actually, he thinks he always could tell but now he at least knows for sure that it's not him going insane.

 

“When I woke up, I somehow made my way to you. I didn't want to scare you that night… and I couldn't bring myself to hurt you. I was just so _hungry_ still. I’m not very nice when I’m hungry. Or in general but you know whatever. At least I'm still alive.”

 

"Because of what's inside of you."

 

"You say that like its a bad thing."

 

“Something foreign taking over your body from the inside isn’t a bad thing?”

 

“Your _dick_ definitely wasn't.” he smiles

 

"Zayn," Liam swallows thickly, shaking his head "You're... _it's_ _killing people_."

 

"So what? People die every day. If it wasn't for your stupid attempt at _sabotage_ , they wouldn't've tried to sacrifice Zayn in the first place!" The name slips but, Liam figures he doesn't have a reason to pretend to be Zayn anymore.

 

"In fact, you should be thankful. If it wasn't for me, this pathetic excuse of a body would be rotting in the _ground_ right now."

 

"Okay okay." Liam quickly says, careful not to make him angry. He seems to realise that he's scaring Liam so he sighs, toning down his anger completely.

 

"Look, I'm not gonna kill you, Liam. We’re already full and… I do actually like you." He says with a reassuring smile. Liam drops his gaze to the bed, eye contact feeling too creepy now.

 

Aside from the fact that they just had sex, his eyes were just unsettling. They were Zayn's but… they weren't Zayn’s. The window into them was empty. Void behind them.

 

“What do you want from me?”

 

“I want whatever you want,” he says, leaning down on his elbows so his head rests in hands. “I aim to please.”

 

When he moves again, Liam stands up from the bed abruptly.

 

“We can play house like you guys used to when you were kids. I can be mummy and you can be the _daddy_ ,” he says, dragging his teeth over his lip as he leers at Liam, who keeps his eyes fixed on the ground.

 

Even though he looks like Zayn and _kinda_ talks like him and has all the memories they've shared, whenever Liam looks at him now, he doesn't even see Zayn anymore. He just sees the monster that ripped Louis limb from limb. A conversation with Zayn slips into Liam's mind.

 

_“Why can't I touch Zayn?”_

 

_“... a scary monster will take over his body and seduce you”_

 

Seductive demon powers. Something else living under his skin... Zayn _did_ tell him. Well, he sort of told him. All Zayn said was to stay away. He didn't tell Liam why. Liam supposes he wouldn’t’ve believed him if he told him the whole truth about the thing inside him turning him into a _monster_ and eating people.

 

“I’ll do whatever you want me to.” he’s instantly in front of Liam again, inches away from touching him. His eyes focus on Liam's neck then, frowning.

 

“What happened to your neck?” his hand comes up and grazes Liam's skin, just barely touching him as it hovers over his open wound, pausing when Liam sucks in a sharp breath.

 

“I can fix it for you.”

 

Liam turns away from him, closing his eyes.

 

“I want you to leave.”

 

“Are you _sure_ you want me to leave…?”

 

Liam doesn't say anything to him. He doesn't really want him to leave. He wants Zayn. But he doesn't want him if he's gonna be here too.

 

After a minute of silence passes, Liam doesn't feel him standing behind him anymore. He turns around and sees him climbing onto the window.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

“You said leave.” he shrugs, looking back briefly. “See you at school.”

 

Another innocent smile stretches across his face then right before he leaps from Liam’s window, even though his room is upstairs. Liam quickly goes to see if he's on the ground but, he's gone. Out of his neighbourhood and out of sight.

 

Liam turns around and slides down his window to the ground. It’s as if he was never here at all.

 

Liam doesn't sleep that night at all. He cries on the floor, holding his solid gut.

 

High Tide took Zayn into the woods and _murdered_ him that night. Liam feels like his heart might be ripping in half in his chest.

 

A legend he didn’t even know was real has been unleashed on Manningtree and now it’s turned Zayn’s body into a host for something that can't even die. He couldn't sit around and wait for someone else to die. He couldn’t sit around and wait for Zayn to die either. He wasn't stealing Zayn's body for himself. Not while Liam is still breathing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be called "Lust"


	4. Lust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam wants learns more about the history of his town. And demons. Lucky for him, he's got pretty reliable sources.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the plot deviates away from Jennifer's Body completely since that has a sad ending. This won't end like the movie in case anyone was wondering :)

 

 

 

 

In a time of peril, there's always a bout of calmness.

 

It's like the eye of a storm. Something always has to remind you you're in a storm when the calmness of the eye lets you forget.

 

In Manningtree, the day the news breaks of Louis' death when his body is found in the park is everyone's reminder that they're still in a storm. A reminder that no one is safe and all this madness is still happening. There's a memorial service but, Liam doesn't go this time. He doesn't even leave the house for 2 weeks after convincing his mother that he's sick, blaming the virus going around.

 

He locks himself in his room, ignoring everyone that calls, which is just Harry. He also tells his mum that if Zayn comes by, he under no circumstances is allowed to come inside no matter what he says because they're in a "fight".

 

He spends the next 2 weeks researching all things having to do with the occult and human possession and their town. He ends up finding a book online about their town's history of virgin sacrifices being made in satanic rituals.

 

Everyone knew about the legends but he didn't know people in this century would still _actually_ attempt doing it. He supposes it's not a myth after all. High Tide is rich and famous now so even if they didn't do it right with an actual virgin, they still succeeded. The whole book isn't all online, though. There's only one copy that exists and it's in a shop a few miles on the outskirts of Manningtree.

 

After endless online searching, he only gets as far as devil worshipping fan pages and myths about made up stories with exorcism and demons. He needs to get authentic information from a reliable source. He needs to get that book.

 

Eventually, he goes back to school, expecting everyone to be mourning another loss but, no one but a few people seemed to really care. Sure, they were scared still but they wrote off Louis for going out after curfew. Everyone was desensitised at this point. Grief was two chapters ago.

  
He does get a lot more attention from his peers that he didn't get before. Mainly girls. He doesn’t understand why. All day long, girls he's known since nursery that he didn't even know knew his name would come up to him and ask if he was doing anything later or telling him how good he looked today. Harry tells him it's the “after virgin” glow. Liam at first panics, thinking he's talking about him and Zayn.

 

“What do you mean? You _know_!?”

 

Harry laughs at his jumpiness.

 

“You said you were going all the way with Sophia right?”

 

His heart calms then. He seriously needed to get a grip but, with everything that was happening, that was pretty much impossible.

 

He manages not to run into Zayn anywhere, having to skip a few classes in the process but, he couldn't see Zayn right now. He was trying to save him before it was too late. And he was terrified of that demon after everything that happened. Hearing his voice and watching him twist Zayn’s body around like that has been haunting Liam for the last two weeks. He's not surprised that Harry already figured out who the loose cannibal is but, it takes a lot of convincing for him to understand what's really happening.

 

They're in the men's room when Liam tells Harry everything.

 

"So, let me get this straight," Harry says while they're sitting face to face on the window sill.

 

"The night of the fire, our friend Zayn left with a group of self-proclaimed witches and was sacrificed to Satan in exchange for fame and fortune.”

 

Liam nods.

 

"But what they didn't know was that Zayn hasn't been a _virgin_ since he was 14 so instead... what did you say it was?"

 

"Demonic transference." Liam supplies, showing him the definition in his phone.

 

"It's what happens when you make a virgin sacrifice without using an actual virgin. Instead of him dying, a sex demon called an incubus possessed him."

 

Harry looks up at him, scratching his head

 

"What's an incubus again?"

 

"It's a demon of impurity! It has to feed on human flesh to stay alive in our world, seducing its victims by engaging in sexual activities."

 

Harry blinks.

 

"He's eating boys!" Liam dumbs it down "He touches you, or looks at you and makes you all horny then rips into you when you're at your peak. It takes over Zayn's body randomly. That's why he never eats anything anymore. Normal food makes him sick. Like when he threw up on me after eating the stuff in my fridge.”

 

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe he looks at you like that and touches you like that because he _likes_ you? And maybe it makes you horny because you very much like him too? He threw up on you that night cause he’s a vegetarian that ate _raw_ chicken. You know… after he tried to eat _NIALL_!”

 

“IT’S BECAUSE OF THE DEMON! When he's full, he's happy and perfect looking but when he's hungry, he's irritable and ugly. It fucks up his personality and makes him emotionally unstable.”

 

"Did I just hear you say that _Zayn Malik_ is ugly?" Harry asks with a raised eyebrow.

 

Liam shakes his head in frustration.

 

"No not _ugly_ ugly. _Zayn_ ugly. You know what I mean Harry. This is serious! You have to help me get this book so we can figure out how to save his soul from being trapped forever!"

 

Harry puts both his hands on Liam's shoulders

 

"Li, buddy." He sighs "I've known you for as long as I can remember. We've been on amazing adventures together. We got tattoos together and even battled through a raging fire side by side. I would do anything for you, you know that. We're bonded for life. So when I tell you that I think we should go to the _police_ about this instead of taking matters into our own hands--"

 

"Oh my god." Liam brushes his hands off his shoulders and hops off the window sill.

 

"You’re never gonna believe me."

 

Harry quickly gets up too.

 

"It's not that I don't believe you. I just don't think you're mind is in the right place, Liam. And yes, I'm taking your mental health into consideration here. You've just recently discovered that the love of your life has been running around town literally _eating_ his friends. I can imagine that's just as shocking and traumatising for you as it is for me, if not way more."

 

Liam shakes his head, as he paces. Now Harry thinks he's crazy too. Harry was the only person he could trust with this. If even he didn't believe him, no one would. If anyone else finds out about this, they’d have Zayn in jail and _executed_.

 

"He's my friend too Liam. I don't want to see him in jail any more than you do but he's _dangerous_."

 

"He's possessed by a--"

 

"A sexy demon, I fucking heard you! Are you hearing _yourself_?”

 

“I know it's impossible to believe but I can prove it! I just need your help.”

 

“Liam I'm not gonna be able to help if you're--”

 

Liam shushes him, freezing suddenly in the middle of pacing. Harry looks around slowly as Liam listens.

 

_“What?”_

 

There's a brief pause.

 

“ _Someone’s in here_.”

 

As soon as he says that, the sound of someone vomiting erupts from one of the stalls. Liam’s blood runs hot as his entire body seized up.

 

A girl stumbles out right after.

 

 _"Perrie?!?"_ Liam and Harry both gasp.

 

She stands there on wobbly knees, looking very sick.

 

"Sorry, I must've wandered into the wrong loo." She laughs nervously.

 

Tension is thick in the air now, everyone froze in place, waiting for something else to happen.

 

After a beat, Perrie breaks into a run, headed straight for the door. Liam is there before she can get out, grabbing her from behind. She starts screaming at the top of her lungs then so he covers her mouth. Harry covers his face with his hand, shaking his head slowly.

 

"Let her go." He sighs

 

Liam does as she wiggled free but he blocks the door.

 

"You can't tell anyone what you heard!"

 

She shakily clutches her jacket closed, over her slightly pudgy belly, shaken from being manhandled.

 

"Don't tell anyone that Zayn is possessed by a demon? Sure, you've nothing to worry about." She huffed, slapping him out of her way "And don't _ever_ fucking touch me again you freak!"

 

She slams the door closed in her exit. As if she didn't hate Liam enough, now she has a reason as he’s just technically assaulted her.

 

Harry looks at Liam like he's got two heads.

 

"What the fuck was that?"

 

"I panicked! I thought she was gonna tell everything!"

 

“I didn't know you could move so fast…”

 

Liam looks down at the ground from where he got from the middle of the room to Perrie in seconds. He didn't know he could run that fast either.

 

"This is great. She probably thinks we're both complete nuts now! One more girl to cross off the list of ever being interested in me. Cheers mate, thanks for that."

 

"She's a lesbian Haz."

 

"No, she isn't. Didn't you hear about her and Louis? She's gonna be on the rebound. I heard she might be pregnant though so maybe not.”

 

Liam shakes his head in disgust.

 

"That's so sick. Louis just _died_."

 

"Yeah, because Zayn ate him! Or would you rather me refer to him as the sexy demon?"

 

"This isn't a fucking joke Harry! I can prove it to you if you just come with me to get this book today!"

 

The scepticism and hesitancy from Harry were expected. No Liam isn't always in his right mind, he knows that. But this was very real shit and there's no way he can do anything about it alone. Harry read old books about this kind of stuff all the time. So much so he was almost fluent in 3 different languages just from how much he's studied ancient text in philosophy and religion. The only other person Liam knew that was smarter than Harry was Zayn.

 

He doesn't even know how he was gonna prove to Harry any of this was real without putting them in danger but… the demon said he wasn't gonna hurt Liam and for some idiotic reason, he believes him just based off other… _things_ … he's said to Liam. Even though he read that demons lie all the time, he just knows it won't. At least not kill him. If that was the case, he would've killed him when he had the chance and he’s had more than plenty.

 

“Why do I feel like I don’t have a choice?” Harry sighs. Liam shakes his head.

 

“Because you don't. The shop is just outside of town. If it turns out to be completely useless then... we'll do things your way.” Liam compromises, Harry's way being going to the police and ensuring that he will never see Zayn ever again because he'll be locked away forever.

 

Harry agrees to Liam’s shocked relief. He usually couldn't persuade Harry to do anything this crazy like how Zayn could. But here he was now agreeing to go on a hunt for a book that might not even really exist. They leave then, Harry slinging his arm over Liam’s shoulder, squeezing sympathetically.

 

“We're gonna help him Li. No matter what happens, he's gonna get help.”

 

Liam closes his eyes as they walked. It wasn't too late for him to have hope still.

 

  
*

 

  
They leave right after school and plan to hopefully get back home before the curfew. Since Louis’ murder, they’ve really cracked down on people being out too late. You could get fined up to a hundred pounds now and Liam couldn’t afford to be arrested with the incubus on the loose. The whole ride, Harry asks Liam a million questions about everything he knows about Zayn.

 

"When he blacks out, where does he disappear to?"

 

Liam shrugs as he drives

 

"I'm not entirely sure but, I don't think he literally disappears. He said it happens in stages. He just eventually doesn't have control of his body. Like how it is when I disassociate only with Zayn, the demon takes over when he's not there."

 

Harry sighs, nodding anyways. He's _really_ trying to believe. Liam knows he's trying. But he knows he doesn't. He keeps asking stuff anyways.

 

"When does he “lose control” of his body?"

 

"It's kind of sporadic. Usually, after he eats again or has some kind of emotional outburst, but there's no pattern or way to know at all when it'll happen. He could be there for 5 minutes and then gone for a week." Liam had been mentally keeping track of when Zayn was Zayn.

 

"How can you tell when it's Zayn?"

 

That was a good question. Liam doesn't know how. His eyes don't always change. Sometimes they're still brown and it's still not Zayn. Whatever it was, he knows it’s the same reason he could see him killing Louis from his bedroom. Something is just _wrong_ with Liam.

 

"I dunno. I just can."

 

"Oh yeah, I always forget about your psychic connection."

 

Liam quirks his eyebrow

 

"My what?"

 

"You know, you and Zayn being able to actually _feel_ each other." Harry supplied.

 

"What the hell are you talking about? Is this one of your weird psychedelic pseudoscientific theories?"

 

Harry laughs

 

"No. And fuck you, this is actually science."

 

Liam rolls his eyes but listens anyway. No matter how weird the things Harry said were sometimes, every now and then he'd say something that was actually interesting so, all his friends were just naturally inclined to listen.

 

"This isn't something I've made up, alright? Physics can back me up here. Humans and everything on this planet is made up of atoms, yeah? Positive, negative, neutral... you know, particles and that. Same stuff stars are made of."

 

Liam nods. He sort of understood physics. The belief that everything is made of stardust was just a cool theory but the atoms part is really science so he knows Harry’s not making this up.

 

"All the atoms on the outside are negatively charged. They can only be attracted to the opposite charge so an anything with negative particles that we touch is repelled. Since everything is charged negatively on the outside, we never truly touch anything. Our atoms repel each other. Makes since?"

 

Liam nods slowly, waiting for his point to be made.

 

"The thing about you and Zayn is, you've never technically repelled each other. Even when we were kids, it was like you could feel everything about each other. Your thoughts and emotions... even if you were nowhere near each other. I always felt a bit left out of the loop because you guys were always in your own little world together. Like, maybe you came from the same star."

 

"That's ridiculous Harry. There is no "loop"." Liam laughs.

 

"There most definitely IS a loop."

 

Liam bites his lip silently.

 

"Are you seriously saying that me believing you’re really soulmates is more ridiculous than you convincing me that a demon has taken control of Zayn's body?"

 

"Yes."

 

Harry smacks his lips. He was done with Liam pretending like he doesn't know what he's talking about. He doesn't even need to bring up the fact that he and Zayn were in each other's throats everyday 2 weeks ago.

 

"So does this mean you believe me?" Liam asks. Harry shrugs, looking at Liam thoughtfully.

 

"I dunno. What's worst? Zayn being possessed by a demon or Zayn suddenly becoming a cannibal? Who am I to say that isn't possible? I'd rather not like to think you've actually lost your mind. If there's a demon clinging to Zayn's soul right now, I guess you'd feel it too."

 

Liam sighs as he drives. He doesn't know what that is he's feeling but it was there alright. Every day he felt it more and more, growing more prominent by the second. It was only a matter of time before that feeling would consume him totally. If he lost Zayn to it... He can't even think about what would happen. All he knows right now is as long some part of him is there, then it's not too late for him to be saved.

 

  
*

 

  
The shop turns out to be a little cottage that was probably a house turned into a shop. Its right on the border of Manningtree and the next town over. As they get out of the car, Harry stops them before they walk up to it, gawking a bit timidly.

 

"What?" Liam looks at it briefly. It looked kind of creepy and ominous but, that was to be expected.

 

"You didn't tell me we were going to _hell_." Harry swallows.

 

"Don't be such a baby. It’s just a shop."

 

Harry grasps his arm, pointing at the sign on the front.

 

" _Cocytus_? Don't you know what that is?"

 

Liam shakes his head

 

"It means lamentation. As in sorrow. _Mourning_. It's the name of the river in the underworld where the dead abode. The 9th ring of Dante's inferno?"

 

Liam shrugs

 

"So?"

 

"So? Liam, you don't understand." Harry gazes up at the shop as he speaks

 

" _Cocytus is the final destination of hell."_

 

A gust of wind picks up then, kicking up dead leaves and stirring the ravens hanging out in the twisted, petrified trees surrounding the area, dancing in the cool breeze.

 

"And it’s right on the cusp of our fun little town and the rest of the world. Sounds about right." Liam sighs as he heads for the door.

 

"You can stay in the car if you don't want to come in. 'M not gonna force you."

 

Harry gulps, taking half a step back until a crow caws at him from below, making him nearly piss his pants.

 

"Aye! I a..." He clears his throat, playing off his alarm

 

"I... think it's fine." He laughs nervously, running to catch up with Liam "Like you said, it’s just a shop, yeah?"

 

Liam laughs, shaking his head. He didn't want to be here either. It gave him the creeps and he swears the little cherub statues perched in some of the trees were watching them as they walked up but, there weren't a whole lot of options for what to do right now.

 

When they walk inside, air whooshes out of the door as if it hasn't been opened in years.

 

"Aw Christ..." Harry wrenches, covering his nose.

 

"It smells like mouldy old people, _fuck_."

 

Liam had to agree with that one. It smelled like a few things were on the brink of dying in here. The air was stale and musty.

 

It was more than just a used book shop. There were endless rows of trinkets and junk that didn't look like it had much of a purpose. Broken shards of glass. Beaten up trainers. Empty little jars in different shades. Torn off doll heads. There were only about 3 bookshelves so, Liam figures finding the book will be easy.

 

"Come on." He says, beginning to search. Harry goes straight to the trinkets, examining everything curiously.

 

"What is all this shit? There's no labels." He says, squinting at a little furry hand he's picked up.

 

 _"Don't touch anything!"_ Liam hisses so Harry drops it.

 

"We're just here to get the Enchiridion of Many Trees and go. There aren't a lot of books written about our town's history with witches and human sacrifices gone wrong."

 

"That sounds like a really intense porno." Harry laughs.

 

Liam glares at him.

 

"Why so serious? I'm just trying to lighten the mood here. I barely slept in a week knowing there's a fucking man-eating teenaged boy lurking around in my neighbourhood."

 

Liam rolls his eyes as he looks through the occult section.

 

"Oi, didn't mean to eavesdrop but, did I just hear you say you're looking for the Enchiridion of Many Trees?"

 

Someone from the front of the store asks. Liam and Harry both look up at the front desk where a guy with shoulder length, frizzy brown hair is leaning over, reading a magazine.

 

"Do you work here?"

 

“Uh… _yeah_ ,” he says slowly in a manner that might say he really doesn't.

 

“Name’s Johnny. Welcome to Cocytus.”

 

Johnny sets down his book and leaps over the other side of the shelf, ducking behind it briefly. Liam and Harry look at each other sceptically.

 

He pops back up with a thick, ancient looking book.

 

"You're in luck. I just dug this out of our cellar a few days ago."

 

"Really?" Liam comes over and opens it. For a four-hundred-year-old book, it was in pretty good shape. Harry leans over the counter as well, reading over the pages Liam flips through. The inside cover says it belonged to Gerald Miller, author unknown.

 

"Look! Demonic transference, I told you it's real!" Liam shows Harry the section, reading it while Harry just looks at the picture of the half goat, half serpent looking animal that's probably supposed to be a demon.

 

 _"If the sacrifice is made impure, the demon may forever reside in the soul of the vessel..._ " Liam reads aloud.

 

“The vessel is Zayn's body. Zayn is the soul. The impurity is obviously his virginal status, this is it!”

 

Harry glances at him, narrowing his eyes.

 

"You know, you look totally different without glasses. How are you able to read anything?"

 

Liam had almost forgot about them. He hadn't needed his glasses in 2 weeks. They gave him a headache. The weird thing was, he could actually see way better _without_ them. He was too focused on more pressing issues than himself, though. Like a demon possessing Zayn.

 

"Hey look, here's our demon!"

 

He points to a section titled

 

**Succubus/Incubus**

 

Johnny looks up from his magazine, eyeing them curiously.

 

"You wouldn't happen to be from Manningtree would you?" He asks. Liam and Harry both nod.

 

"So I'm guessing you're current cannibal on the loose is the work of someone attempting to sacrifice a virgin that turned out to be a bit of a slut huh?"

 

They both look up at him slowly.

 

"You know about-"

 

"You're looking in the wrong section." He laughs, flipping through the pages. Liam and Harry look at each other again, the look questioning if this was a wise decision in coming here.

 

"Here's what you need." He points to a page titled

 

**Killing a demon**

 

"My grandfather used to be a demonologist, specialising in necromancy." He explains when he sees how they're looking at him.

 

"Those exist?" Harry asks. Necromancy was… _witchcraft_.

 

"You don't sound like you're from around here," Liam says. Something about this guy wasn't sitting right.

 

"I'm from Bromley."

 

"As in... London?" Harry looks up at him. He didn't look that much older than them. Johnny nods.

 

“Isn't that where Sophia is from?” Harry asks Liam, who nods.

 

“Yeah, Sophia. She moved to Manningtree last year. She’s my cousin.” Johnny says.

 

“No shit,” Harry elbows Liam.

 

“What are the chances?”

 

"Then what are you doing in Essex?" Liam asks, looking at his name tag which reads ‘ _J_. _Miller_ ’. It looked like a visitor's tag actually.

 

He really didn't want to talk or think about Sophia right now. He's never met or seen any of her relatives. Not even her parents.

 

"I visit my grandad like 3 months out of the year. He grew up in Manningtree."

 

"Ah, my condolences," Harry says. Liam hits him in the shoulder.

 

"No, it's okay. You're right, this town is a death trap."

 

"Tell me about it." Harry shakes his head, going back to the book.

 

"No I mean it's actually a death trap.” Johnny reiterates.

 

“My family moved away with their coven generations ago after the crisis 400 years ago. They lynched so many witches, the town was cursed. You die in Manningtree now, your soul will never move on. Especially if a demon gets to you first. Grandad used to tell us stories about it. This was his guide. I have a cousin in a band that came here for a gig a few weeks ago. He said he’s seen this stuff for himself. I never have but, I know all the history of it.”

 

Liam stops listening to him after that. This guy doesn't strike him as someone with the screws in too tight. It sounds like he's saying he comes from a family of witches. Not that Liam didn't believe in necromancy. Liam didn't know _what_ he believed right now. Zayn said things don't go the way you want to believe so Liam had no choice but to throw his beliefs out the window. He needed to stay focused on Zayn.

 

“You have a cousin in a band that came here?” Harry asks. Johnny nods.

 

“Yeah. Eggsy Miller. Maybe you’ve heard of his band?”

 

“You’re cousins with Eggsy fucking Miller? Liam, did you hear that?” Harry smiles, trying to get Liam’s attention but, he’s not listening to them. He’s trying to read about how to separate a demon from a body.

 

Johnny and Harry get into a discussion about High Tide while Liam continues reading.

 

The more he reads, the more he finds that this might end the complete opposite of the way he wanted.

 

In order to kill a demon, you had to destroy the vessel when it's weak. According to this guide, the most effective way to stop a demon was to wait until he's most vulneraable so you can stab it in the heart. As in Zayn's heart.

 

"'cuse me." Liam interrupts "Do you know of a section on how to separate a demon from a body?"

 

Johnny frowns

 

"Oh no. That's impossible. Demons can't live separately from a vessel on earth’s surface.”

 

"Why not?" Harry asks.

 

"Well if they could, they'd just be walking around, constantly wreaking havoc."

 

"Well, the one in our town is already doing that!" Liam tells him.

 

Johnny shakes his head, leaning over the book, pointing at one of the pictures of a supposed fallen angel with two faces and the body of a snake.

 

"This kind of thing can't exist in our world. Demons, angels, and anything of that nature don't have corporeal forms, or bodies if you will. Demons can't walk among us unless they have a body to live in, which is why there's so many stories about human sacrifices and demonic possession. Think of it like a human trying to live amongst fish. We can't quite live under water but, we can hold our breath long enough to poke around in the sea. Eventually, we'll need to come back to the surface for air. That's how our world is to them. They can hang around on the surface for a short while, making a mess of things while they're here but, they wouldn't survive without a body. Now, once the human gets a diving suit and an oxygen tank, that's a whole other story. Once the demon is in a body, they're set. The stronger the demon gets, the more that body becomes _their_ body until it's destroyed.”

 

That was probably the worst thing Liam could've heard.

 

"There's no way to kill a demon without killing the person?"

 

Johnny tilts his head from side to side

 

"I suppose you could if got it back into the underworld where it belongs.”

 

"How?" Harry asks.

 

"There’s lots of ways if you do it in time. You could open a portal or, perform a satanic ritual and hope it goes right this time…. sacrifices set at the end of the harvest season so, you have about a month."

 

Liam goes back to reading some more. As he does, something on his neck catches Harry's eye. Something he saw on Niall.

 

"Hey, did Zayn happen to bite you by chance?"

 

Liam feels his neck, rubbing over the scar that's healed over now.

 

"Yeah. The incubus kinda got me to... do stuff."

 

Harry narrows his eyes at him

 

"What kind of 'stuff'?"

 

"...wekindahadsex" Liam mumbles.

 

"What?" Harry squints

 

"We had sex!"

 

Harry's eyes bulge

 

"You had sex with Zayn?!?"

 

Johnny immediately closed the Enchiridion, gawking at Liam like he's looking at a ghost.

 

"You had sex with an _incubus?"_ He gasps, looking him up and down

 

"How are you still alive?"

 

Liam shrugs

 

"He said he wasn't gonna kill me."

 

"It doesn't matter what he said. It's an incubus. Its sole purpose in having sex with people is so it can eat. They can't have sex with humans without killing them. That's like trying to eat food without swallowing it."

 

"I'm still stuck on the fact that you failed to mention that you had sex with ZAYN!" Harry smiles

 

"It wasn't Zayn! Well, it wasn't at first. He kinda came in the middle of it,"

 

"I _bet_ he did." Harry laughs

 

"It doesn't matter who you were sleeping with," Johnny examines his scar "It should've killed you… you said he bit you?”

 

"Obviously I'm still alive! Can I buy this book please?" Liam bats his hand away, pushing the book towards Johnny. He didn't want to talk about it. He'd been trying to forget it even happened.

 

"So how was it?" Harry asks, grinning wide as Johnny looked through the book, eyeing Liam cautiously. As if Liam was the demon.

 

"How was what?"

 

"The sex! Obviously."

 

Liam rubs over his neck.

 

"Honestly, I don't even remember it. I blacked out." It's not a total lie. He did blackout… when it was Sophia.

 

Johnny continues to look at Liam strangely as he brings up the total.

 

"That'll be 250."

 

"250 pounds?!" Harry and Liam both shout. Johnny nods.

 

"Can't you give us some kind of a deal?"

 

"We don't have that kind of money!"

 

There's no register or anything to indicate how he came up with such a ridiculous price. Johnny bites his lip, looking behind them briefly before sighing.

 

"Okay look. I'm not supposed to tell anyone this but, every book in here is real and rare. As in only one of each exists. Whether it's about aliens or mermaids or spells or demons, they're all gonna be in the hundreds. But all the junk you see lying around isn’t as rare so it's typically way cheaper."

 

Liam and Harry both look around at all the stuff.

 

"If you buy one, it can probably help you afford a few books with a trade... they're cursed items."

 

Liam gives him a worried look while Harry grins.

 

“Seriously?”

 

Johnny nods.

 

“Just be careful of what you choose to buy. Once you purchase it, it's yours. Forever.”

 

Liam nods slowly, drumming his fingers on the shelf.

 

“Alright Haz. I think we should look at everything first and then choose whichever one looks-- Harry!”

 

Harry is already galloping back to the furry hand from earlier.

 

"This little keychain is so cute!" He laughs. Liam drags his hand over his face.

 

“Harry! We have to take this _seriously_ \--”

 

“How much for it?” Harry grabs it and comes back over, slamming it down on the counter, making Liam cringe hard.

 

“ _Fuck sake Harry_ ,” He mumbles, shaking his head.

 

Johnny looks up to the ceiling as he thinks.

 

"50 pounds.”

 

He brings the number right out of his ass. Liam is starting to wonder if this is really even a shop as he looks around cautiously.

 

“For a bloody key chain?” Harry protests “What a rip-off!”

 

“It's obviously not _just_ a keychain!” Liam mutters through clenched teeth.

 

“Everything in here is _cursed_.”

 

“I've been in places like this before, love. _None of it is real_. We can trade it.”

 

Johnny rolls his eyes.

 

“Are you gonna buy the monkey's paw or not? They’re kind of rare. I’m probably not even supposed to sell them...” He impatiently asks, obviously trying to convince Harry to buy it.

 

Harry winks at Liam before turning back to Johnny with a polite smile.

 

“Yes, I’ll have one _monkey's paw_.” he nods his head exaggeratedly. Johnny rolls his eyes again as he takes his money, then smiles.

 

“It's all yours mate. Ask it whatever you want and it's yours.”

 

Liam chews on his lip as he watches Harry admire his new found gift like it was a toy. It wasn't any bigger than a baby doll’s hand and it was designed like a keychain. Liam could understand that Harry wasn't gonna believe any of this until it was proved to him but, he knew better. They read the story of the monkey's paw in nursery school. It definitely wasn't a toy.

 

"Wait!" Johnny stops him before he asks it anything.

 

"What?"

 

"Making a wish on a monkey's paw can be _very dangerous_. There will most likely be a catch if you don't word out correctly. Like if you just vaguely wished for 250 pounds, who's gonna give it to you? A bank robber that happens by? Maybe he shoots us. Is it gonna fall out of a plane in someone's luggage and crash through the ceiling? Maybe that decapitates one of us."

 

Harry rolls his eyes as looks at the thing for a moment.

 

"So, you're saying I have to be... specific?"

 

"Yes. Very very, exactly specific."

 

After staring at it for almost a minute in silence, one of the fingers on the hand goes down by itself. Harry yelps as he drops it on the ground right after.

 

“Whoa…” Liam stares at it in awe. Johnny goes white as he gawks at Harry, looking between the two of them like he’s looking at a pair of demons before him. Liam frowns at him.

 

“Are you alright?” Liam asks tentatively. Johnny snaps out of it, blinking down as he fumbles with the book.

 

“Y-Yeah,” He stammers quickly, clearing his throat.

 

“Anyt-thing else you wanna buy?”

 

Liam can see him almost trembling as he squeezes his fist up tight at his sides. He doesn’t understand why he’s so afraid all of the sudden. Maybe cause he knows what the monkey’s paw is too and Harry just wished for something without thinking through whatever he asked.

 

Harry quickly reaches into his wallet right after and reveals it's suddenly full of cash. Like, so much it's almost spilling out.

 

"Holy fuck!" He shouts, laughing "I did NOT think that was gonna work..."

 

“You know it looks like the price just jumped. The Enchiridion is _actually_ 1,000.”

 

Okay. This guy is isn't even trying to hide the fact that he's making up prices now. Liam narrows his eyes as he looks around again, trying to figure out what else this could be if it wasn't really a store.

 

Harry hands Liam everything in his wallet, which is _thousands_. Everything he takes out just replenishing itself in the wallet when he opens it again. Like an endless, _all you can spend_ buffet. Johnny ends up hawking the price up to almost 5 grand the more books Liam decides to buy. Harry’s wallet never runs out if cash.

 

Liam buys the Enchiridion along with a few others on demons and the underworld while Harry buys a few more cursed items and they leave before anything catastrophic can happen.

 

"Come back later and spend as much money as you want!" Johnny shouts after telling them good luck, admiring the 10K he's swindled from them.

 

They're not too bothered about practically being robbed in there. They sort of robbed each other with all the shit they bought that Johnny probably wasn't even supposed to sell. They have all the money in the world now.

 

“Holy fucking shit do you know what this means?” Harry freaks out in the car.

 

"What exactly did you wish for?" Liam laughs on the drive back home.

 

Harry only smiles

 

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.” He says. Liam smiles shaking his head, Harry’s, however, falters as he looks out the window, the gravity of what he's asked from the monkey's paw dawning on him.

 

“ _Zayn really is trapped_ …” he murmurs. Liam nods gravely.

 

“What makes you believe it now?”

 

“Seriously, I just won a bet from a monkey's paw. I don’t wanna jinx it.”

 

Well, _that_ was reassuring.

 

Liam squeezes the steering wheel harder. This just got better and better by the second.

 

  
*

 

  
Liam gave Harry a few of the books he bought so he’ll be able to study up as well. He kept the Enchiridion for himself, staying up reading it all night long, finding himself barely even getting tired. The guide is about a thousand pages long but it's so big, the text is probably 3 times as long for a normal sized book. By the time he got to school, he’s only halfway through it. He continues reading it throughout the day, carefully avoiding Zayn still.

 

According to this book, there was no way Liam should’ve survived having sex with an incubus. are No human being has ever been recorded to have survived being visited by an incubus or succubus, especially if they finished and Zayn _definitely_ finished.

 

Liam scratches the scar on his neck thoughtfully.

 

"Hey, stranger."

 

Liam looks up from where he’s sitting on the railing in the hall, startled at first. In front of him, Sophia smiles with her arms crossed. Not a real smile. One of her _"I'm-actually-pissed-off-with-you"_ smiles.

 

“Well, you look like you've lost a lot of weight.”

 

Probably because he hasn't been eating. Or sleeping. Or showering…

 

"Hi." He replies, monotone as he goes back to the book and also his phone where he was googling things about their town.

 

He was reading an article about High Tide coming back to Manningtree to perform at their school dance a few weeks from now, which just so happens to be on Halloween. Also known as the end of the harvest season. That was when the sacrifice sets. It definitely wasn't a coincidence they were coming back on that exact day.

 

"Hi?" Sophia repeats

 

"That's all you have to say to me after not hearing from you for 2 bloody weeks after we had sex for the first time?"

 

In light of everything, Liam forgot they even attempted to have sex. It really wasn't worth all the hype guys obsess over. Especially compared to what happened when he came home.

 

"I've kinda been going through a lot lately."

 

"Is that supposed to be your apology?"

 

Liam squints at her.

 

"What would I be apologising for?"

 

"Obviously you took the notion of hit and run literally."

 

"Excuse you?" He says slowly, putting his phone away.

 

"You know, you could've at least had the decency to actually break up with me instead of pretending like I don't exist!"

 

"I wasn't trying to break up with you. I didn't even _want_ to have sex to be totally honest but I did it anyways and I really regret that but you got what you wanted so I don't understand why you're even acting like you're so upset, as if you've even tried to talk to me in weeks.”

 

Sophia scowls at him

 

"I got what I wanted? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

 

Liam rolls his eyes

 

"I figured out a while ago you were only interested in me because you wanted to be able to say you took someone's virginity. And I know you were sleeping with Louis behind my back. Don't even try to deny it because he said you were at his house.”

 

Sophia blinks with wide eyes.

 

"That's... that isn't true--"

 

"It doesn't even matter. I seriously don't care."

 

He's not even being funny. Whatever hurt might've been there from that has been buried with all his other emotions that come and die inside him.

 

Sophia goes from looking embarrassed to looking totally infuriated.

 

"You're _not_ breaking up with me." She states it as a fact.

 

"The only thing I'm doing right now is reading this book." He says, all too calm. Sophia squints at what he's reading, then huffs out indignantly, shaking her head.

 

"You know what? You're right. I did want to be the one to take your virginity because I wanted to mean something to you the same way your stupid "best friend" does but I suppose that's impossible. You’re talking about _me and Louis_? You think I don’t know about _you and Zayn_ fucking around-"

 

Liam looks back up at her, glaring as he slams the book closed. Sophia backs up a little, suddenly frightened.

 

“No. You _don’t_ know about me and Zayn. You don’t know _shit_ about me and Zayn.”

 

Hell, Liam didn't even know about him and Zayn right now.

 

“Whatever. Like you said, I don’t know why I’m even talking to you either. You act like a complete _lunatic_ half of the time and I’ll gladly take everyone’s suggestion not to put up with it anymore.” she tiffs, flipping her hair as she marches away. Liam stands up, shaking his head.

 

"Oh and one more thing," she turns back around briefly "I was only at Louis' house that day for Perrie as she wanted to officially announce to her closest friends that she was pregnant with his baby."

 

Liam looks up at her suddenly, shocked.

 

"I’ve been sleeping with Andy from the football team."

 

She finally marches off.

 

_“Wasting an entire year on that fag for nothing.”_

 

He somehow hears her mutter that under her breath. It reminds him of what Eggsy said at the party. Even that doesn't bother him at all. It's not like it's the first time he's heard someone call him that.

 

After she leaves, Zayn reveals himself to be right around the corner, one hand in his pocket while he puffs on a cigarette, all cool and nonchalant. Well, not really Zayn. His fucked up alter ego. _Demon_ Zayn. Zayn quit smoking cigarettes over a year ago and it really ticks Liam off that this thing is poisoning his body all over again.

 

“Shit… _Andy?_ I was close wasn’t I? Same asshole, different name.” He snorts.

 

Liam holds the book behind his back as the demon strolls over, crowding up in his personal space, getting cigarette smoke all in the air he's breathing.

 

“Haven’t heard from you in 80 years. Have you been _avoiding_ me or are we playing hide and seek?”

 

Liam swallows, shaking his head slowly.

 

Demons can smell every emotion on you. Fear, anger, happiness, all of it. It's how he always knows what Liam is really feeling. So, he keeps his mind carefully blank and his face indifferent. It’s a struggle, though. He couldn't disassociate for shit around him.

 

“I’ve been really busy lately.” He says casually. The demon blows out smoke through his nose with raised eyebrows.

 

“Busy doing what?”

 

“Studying.”

 

Behind his back, the demon reveals _he_ has the Enchiridion, flipping it open with one hand, rapidly flying through the pages while he continues to smoke, nodding like he's reading something he finds interesting even though it’d be nearly impossible to read anything as fast as he’s going through it. Liam’s very alarmed that he hadn’t even noticed him taking it. He finishes the entire book in 15 seconds.

 

“Studying this nonsense about _demons?_ You don’t really believe this shit now do you?” He asks, turning the book over curiously. Liam gulps again, thicker this time as he feels the sweat building up on him. He feels like he's standing in front of an actual furnace.

 

“Considering the fact that I’m talking to one right now… yeah.”

 

He looks back up at Liam as he laughs.

 

“I think I look pretty human right now, don’t you?” He gestures down Zayn’s body, kicking out his black Chuck Taylor's.

 

“You know, you really shouldn’t fill your brain with this inaccurate nonsense anyways. This book was written by a _man_. A witch more specifically and those two don't really mesh well. If you really want to know more about demons, you could just ask one.” He says, shoving it in Liam’s chest. Then he squints at Liam, smirking.

 

“You look really good without glasses by the way. Where are they? Didn’t I tell you I like it better when you can see my face?”

 

“I don’t need my glasses to know it’s not _your_ face I’m looking at.”

 

The demon laughs at that, shaking his head.

 

“And what does my face look like, babe? This sexy guy?” He gestures to the satanic creature on the front of the book with 3 faces and the body of a dragon. Liam didn't want to think about what his face looks like. It was hideous.

 

“ _My dearest little Lima Bean,_ ” He sighs, eyes rolling backwards slowly as they disappear into a void.

 

 _ **“I don’t have a face.”**_ He voice goes impossibly deep and distorted, doing that terrifying thing where it sounds like 5 different people are talking at once.

 

It reaches deep inside Liam and vibrates around his bones sorely. He winces, backing away, almost dropping the book over the railing. The demon catches him, frowning as his eyes return to normal. Almost like he’s actually worried Liam might fall over. Liam squeezes his eyes closed, holding his rib cage.

 

That familiar feeling of something crawling around inside him leaves immediately as he gasps for air. Usually, that would’ve made him all aroused and horny but now, it makes him feel nauseous… like he’s gonna throw up. He keeps it down, though, coughing into his hand. When he looks into it, there’s something black splattered on his skin. And it burns.

 

 _“What did you… do to me?”_ Liam gasps, holding himself upright on the railing.

 

His insides are bubbling up unpleasantly like he’s not gonna be able to keep whatever is boiling in his stomach down much longer. For a minute there, the demon almost looked just as confused as Liam feels about what just happened.

 

He looks at the black chunky mess in his hand with alarm, then lifts Liam’s chin up, looking him in the eye. His eyes disappear briefly as he gazes into him. Liam can actually _feel_ him looking into him through his eyes, searching for something.

 

He gasps as his mouth pops open when his eyes come back, looking at Liam with alarm all over his face as if he just looked at Liam and found rats running around in his body. He quickly takes the book out of his hand then, holding it under his armpit as he grasps Liam’s hand and drags him away downstairs with him.

 

“Where are we going?”

 

The demon doesn’t answer, continuing ahead until they’re headed towards outside.

 

In the hall downstairs, Harry is chatting up his friend Lindsay when he sees Liam and Zayn coming down the stairs and leaving the building, squinting as they go right by them. Liam looks like he's gonna puke. Before he can follow, a teacher yells at them for not being in class so, he can’t try to delve any further to figure out where the hell they’re going.

 

Outside, the demon pulls Liam all the way to the parking lot, up to Zayn's car before Liam just can't keep it together anymore. The boiling in his gut erupts a little, making him spit up goo. The demon lets go of him as he crouches on the ground, dry heaving air roughly. He can't allow for himself throw up. It'll sear his mouth. So he forces it back down. He wants to cry from how horrible it feels inside him. Like acid sizzling inside.

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Liam gags.

 

The demon bends down in front of Liam.

 

“You have to spit it all out.”

 

Liam shakes his head, breathing raggedly.

 

“ _It… burns_ ,” he wheezes. His eyes are tearing up as he breathes in spurts.

 

The demon lightly touches the side of his neck. The touch yanks hard on something deep inside Liam, sending the nauseous feeling soaring through his body, making it impossible for him to keep down now.

 

“Spit it out!”

 

Liam doesn't have a choice. He leans down and spews a seemingly endless amount of putrid, jet black liquid, boiling hot as it passes through his throat and mouth. It pulsates and smokes when it hits the ground. The heat is too much. It’s the last thing he remembers before his eyes roll back as he passes out.

 

 

*

 

  
Liam feels his body being jostled around a bit when his eyes start to crack open a little. He's in a car, in the passenger’s seat. Zayn’s driving. Actually, it's not Zayn. It's still the demon. He can smell the burning always coming from him although it's being masked heavily by the cigarette smoke.

 

Liam peeks over at him without moving a muscle. He's not even watching the road. He's staring at his wrist, at Zayn's sun tattooed there while still somehow driving perfectly, weaving around cars as he speeds without crashing despite all his attention being on his arm.

 

He looks over at Liam’s arm then, who immediately closes his eyes again. He didn't feel as nauseous anymore but he still hadn't thrown up everything that was boiling in his stomach, whatever that was. There’s still a little bit left inside him and it still feels horrible.

 

His own wrist is picked up carefully, feeling his fingers prodding on Liam's moon tattoo. Liam looks _ever so slightly_ , seeing the demon examining his wrist closely before he puts down Liam's hand and holds onto the wheel, looking forward as he speeds up even more. He's driving well past the limit on the meter but every time they almost crash he swerves and Liam thinks he's gonna be sick all over again.

 

Liam can’t help coughing as the car is literally filled with smoke although something tells him he already knew he was awake. The demon actually rolls down his window in response, clearing the air.

 

“Where are we going?” Liam croaks.

 

“If you don't want that shit to kill you, I’d suggest you stop fighting against it and go back to sleep.”

 

Maybe Liam should be worried about where they're going right now but, for some reason… he’s not. He’s right, this stuff in his gut is wearing out his body. He stops fighting against the unconsciousness trying to take him away, letting his eyes droop as everything goes black again, this time for more than a few minutes.

 

  
*

 

  
When Liam wakes up, it takes him a moment to realise where he is now, laying down in bed. It feels like a few hours have gone by. Buried in mountains of covers, the first thing he sees is big blue eyes blinking at him from the side of the bed.

“Lima Bean, you’re awake!” The little girl shouts, springing up and jumping on top of him. It’s Zayn’s little sister, Safaa. Liam groans, smiling as he sits up, realising he’s in Zayn’s bedroom.

 

“Hey little lady,” He laughs, warmly hugging her.

 

“I’ve missed you so much. You look so different!” Safaa squeaks. God, he hadn’t been here since all the chaos started happening.

 

Safaa cuddles into him, hugging tightly. He hadn't even thought about what Zayn's family have been going through. He had two little sisters at home he had to babysit all the time. If this demon has been treating his friends at school like shit, he couldn't even imagine what he was doing to his sisters.

 

"Saf, where's Zayn?" He asks gently. She looks up at him

 

"Zaynie was here every day again ‘cept for today. But Lux is here, he brought you home and carried you up like a sleepy baby.” she giggles.

 

The blood drains from Liam's face.

 

"Who's _Lux_?"

 

"He comes when Zayn isn't here. He's my _bhai_." Safaa smiles. Liam sits up completely and pulls Safaa over so she's in front of him.

 

"What else does Lux say to you?" He asks, carefully keeping the alarm out of his voice.

 

Safaa just turned 4 only a month ago. If she knew about Zayn not being himself, she wouldn't know any better than to trust him. As far as she was concerned, he was still just her big brother.

 

She tells Liam that "Lux" used to be with Zayn all the time but they got separated a long time ago. She also tells him that soon, they'll be together again. Forever. It spreads goosebumps all across his skin.

 

_What does that even mean?_

 

"Is Lux mean to you? Has he hurt you?"

 

Safaa shakes her head.

 

“He watches Dora with me. He says I’m _terribly_ adorable and he wishes that he met me sooner. He plays with me. I like him better than Zayn.” She smiles but then she looks down and frowns.

 

Safaa looks behind her then and beckons for Liam to come closer like she's sharing a secret. When Liam leans forward, she whispers.

 

"I saw him hurt himself. Zayn says not to tell Lux."

 

"Hurt... _himself?"_ Liam repeats. She nods quickly.

 

“Zayn cut his hands open.” She shows Liam her open palms, making slash movements through the centre. Liam holds her hands so she'll stop, looking at her in horror.

 

"Safaa!" Zayn appears in the door, wearing a black wife beater and a pair of Liam’s grey sweats. Liam’s heart jumps from his suddenness.

 

" _Jaao_."

 

Safaa quickly obeys, kissing Liam on the cheek and hopping out of Zayn's bed. He rubs his hand through her hair, messing it up and making her giggle as she skips out of the room. As he walks over to Liam, the door shuts and locks behind him by itself. Liam jolts, disquieted.

 

“You got sick earlier.” He utters, holding Liam’s chin up as he climbs into his lap in bed, caressing his cheek delicately as if Liam might break.

 

“You had me worried for a second there.” his thumb brushes across his cheek while his other hand prods Liam's stomach, gently pushing his hand against it, making the hot fluids inside mush around. Liam winces when he goes lower, grabbing his wrist so he won’t push any harder. The heat feels the worst right below his navel. He sighs, pulling his hand off.

 

“I’m gonna make you feel better.” he smiles briefly, baring his teeth to reveal something he's holding between them that looks like a glowing lump of coal with embers burning at the centre as smoke swirls around it before swallowing it again and leaning down slowly.

 

He kisses Liam deeply, sweeping around in his body again. It’s just a light breeze. It cools off his insides briefly. Liam kisses him back, holding his waist while he drapes his arms over both sides of Liam’s shoulders.

 

He kisses exactly like Zayn. Liam's head tilts to the side while he gradually runs his hands up the sides of Zayn's thin waist, going from his thighs to his hips, exploring the inside of his mouth with his tongue. He wraps his fingers around his sides to grip his lower back as he pulls the demon into him, making him roll his hips into Liam slowly, grinding down against his middle. The demon doesn't seem to mind letting Liam do whatever although, these actions are all completely on his own and not from anything supernatural overcoming him. If this is his way of making Liam feel better... it was working.

 

When his tongue goes over Liam's again, he pushes the black rock into his mouth. The demon pulls away right after. Liam grimaces, almost spitting it out as it tastes like dirt. And it's hot. Almost burning his tongue.

 

"You can swallow this time." He smirks, lightly wiping off Liam's bottom lip with his thumb. Liam complies, not even bothering to chew it.

 

As it scratches down his throat, it burns like he’s just swallowed actual flames. He feels it drop into the fluids in his stomach, erupting a fire inside of him. The heat isn’t what’s painful, though. It’s the black smoke it produces, clogging up his throat. Liam starts choking horribly, gagging for air as it scorches the inside of his throat and stomach. He coughs out a few real flames in the process.

 

The demon scoots off his lap to the end of the bed as he snorts black smoke out of his own nostrils like he's got fire in his gut too, watching Liam choke to death and breathe fire like a dragon, smiling in awe like he's watching a fireworks show.

 

Not too long after, the feeling completely smoothes away, replaced with coolness, like a mint. The fire he's breathing turns into cool air. It feels good now… and tastes like some kind of savoury nectar. It's the best thing he's ever tasted in his life and it replenished all the energy he lost. He almost wants to eat another one. He feels his throat then, swallowing thickly. All the fluids jiggling in his gut have been burned out.

 

"What was that?" He asks with wide eyes "You could've _killed_ me!"

 

"But it didn't." The demon smiles wide.

 

"It's called hellfire, from a place named Lust. You can probably guess where the name comes from. It stops me from suffocating on the surface. It keeps up your health. Clearing out toxins and opening your lungs so you can breathe… like oxygen to humans. You won't be sick anymore. You get used to it eventually so it's easier to ingest.” he explains. So… he just threw up fire in Liam's mouth.

 

No matter how gross that is… he still kind of wants another one. The after affects almost makes Liam feel like he could jump off and cliff and fly if he wanted. Like he'd be invincible.

 

“I can give you another.”

 

“I don't _want_ another!” Liam says sharply which makes him laugh.

 

“Liar…” then with a mischievous smile, he adds.

 

“No human on Earth can touch that and live by the way."

 

Liam sits up suddenly, feeling like his head is spinning in circles.

 

"Are you saying I'm not _human?"_

 

"Ah ah ah. You asked the last question. Now it's my turn." He tuts, scooting closer to Liam.

 

Right about now, he should be at least having an asthma attack but, his breathing just adjusts to his heart rate no matter how fast it moves and it was currently beating out of his chest.

 

"Why are you so afraid of me? I can feel your heart from all the way over here.” He laughs when he sees how hard Liam is trying to contain his panic.

 

"Why wouldn't I be? All you've done is murder people I've known my whole life after forcing yourself onto them!"

 

That seems to hit a nerve. The demon glares at him.

 

 ** _"I didn't force myself onto anyone!"_** He snaps, booming voice shaking Liam’s core as his eyes flash dark.

 

His body jerks unnaturally to the side in the process… that uncontrollable twitching motion that Liam sees in exorcist movies, quickly reminding him that Zayn’s body _is in fact possessed by a demon._

 

Liam immediately recoils, forgetting what he's talking to. The demon dials back his tone when he sees he’s frightened Liam, sighing deeply.

 

"I am not inherently _violent_ Liam. And I'm not a fucking rapist. Despite what idiotic humans have instilled into their simple minds, most demons don't go around _killing_ people just because we can. I am _lust_. I didn't make those boys do anything they didn’t want to do. They gave into sin on their own and now they've suffered the consequences of their vice. I don't make the fucking rules. I exist here now the same as you."

 

Liam nods, deciding that it's best he not raise his voice at him or piss him off again.

 

"Now my turn." He smiles sweetly.

 

"Did you give Zayn an orgasm?"

 

 _"wHat?"_ Liam coughs. The demon rolls his eyes.

 

  
"Don't act so immature about it. I obviously wasn't there the whole time because he's a stingy little _twat_. I just want you to tell me what happened."

 

Liam closes his eyes. He's been trying (and failing) to suppress the memory of that night since it happened because he still didn't know how to feel about it but... he doesn't really have much of a choice right now.

 

He's already tried to kill Liam at least once and that wasn’t even out of anger... just seemingly out of curiosity if Liam would actually die. So, he recounts everything that happened from Zayn biting him to him telling everything that happened when he left with High Tide. The demon rubs his chin thoughtfully.

 

Suddenly, he disappears from the bed, going out the door then coming back in less than 5 seconds. He stands at the door with a butcher knife in his hand, tossing it up into the air a few times leisurely before he launches it at Liam.

 

His first instinct is to catch it instead of diving out of the way, snatching it out of the air before it can impale him right in between his eyes.

 

2 attempted murders in 5 minutes.

 

 _"Wow..."_ The demon laughs at the door. Liam drops the knife, staring at his hands like they don't belong to him.

 

“I thought you weren’t inherently VIOLENT!?” Liam yells at him

 

“ _Relax_ ,” He laughs “I wasn’t gonna let it hurt you if you didn’t catch it on your own.” He says as the knife levitates, hovering in front of Liam’s face on its own for a moment before it’s ripped out of the air and back into the demon’s hand.

 

“I just wanted to make sure you could.” He tosses it leisurely into the air again, then looks back at Liam.

 

“You just caught a knife travelling at 120 miles an hour.”

 

"What-- what did you do to me!?" He yells, standing up as his heart kicks up at an absolutely inhuman rate.

 

The demon drops the knife and jumps on Zayn's bed, smiling like a giddy child.

 

 _"I_ didn't do anything to you. You can actually thank Zayn for your new found capabilities. When he bit you before he came, it appears that he injected some of my pit into your body. That yucky black shit the was dripping out if your neck like I originally thought. So to answer your question from earlier, no. You're not entirely human anymore.” He's suddenly in front of Liam now, lightly tracing his fingers under his chin and jaw without actually touching him as he stares directly into his eyes.

 

Liam holds perfectly still, sucking in a breath.

 

“You see, I am sin itself. _Lust_ to be more specific. Lust is a natural part of humanity that can't be avoided. Part of me is already inside every living human being on this planet so it's very easy to grab onto it and pull to the surface. They're so attracted to sin… it doesn't take much to tempt them. But when I reach inside of you now, I feel nothing.” he ghosts Liam’s mouth with his, just barely skidding over his lips as he touches him gently.

 

Liam can feel the light breeze again, zipping through his body. It actually feels kind of... good, feeling him inside of him. Just as quickly as it came, it vanishes.

 

"The lust in your body has been contorted into something I can only describe to you as _dark_ coursing through your veins. It doesn't really translate in English,” he explains.

 

“In fact, I accidentally made sick so… you’re definitely not attracted to me anymore."

 

He says against Liam's ear, grazing the skin. Liam's breath still hitches as he holds him still so he won't push any closer.

 

"Well, you're not attracted to _me_ anyways." He laughs.

 

“Humans are full of 7 deadly sins. You seem to be missing a few now. Almost like me…”

 

Liam shakes his head, pacing across the room.

 

"No no no no no no no I'm not like... like you I-- I can't I--"

 

"Well, no. You're not _exactly_ like me." He says, flopping into Zayn's bed

 

"I am asomatous.”

 

“Asomatous?” Liam repeats. Lux nods.

 

“Haven’t got a material body.” he shrugs simply.

 

"Does this mean I have to eat people?" Liam asks. The demon looks up thoughtfully.

 

"You shouldn't have to if you don't want to. You’re not full demon. But I've never met a daemon before. Or half-blood, if you will. I don't really know how you're supposed to sustain your strength. There's a legend down in Cocytus that if a demon bites or scratches a human being and they _live_ … they might absorb some of the dark matter from that demon’s pit, giving them inhuman qualities and such but... I’ve always been told that was just a myth." The way he leers at Liam as he talks looks like what a lion might look like when it sees a tasty zebra he wants to rip to shreds. Liam wasn't used to anyone looking at him like this. Like he was the hot one in the room.

 

"Cocytus?" Liam repeats, refusing to squirm under his gaze. "Is that where you came from?"

 

“No… I’m from Lust. Which is why I'm called _lust_. A few levels away from lamentation. Not a place I'm in a hurry to ever see for myself.”

 

Liam nods. Lamentation. The final destination of hell. He runs his hand through his hair as he takes a deep breath.

 

"Zayn… or… um, _Lust_ ," he starts.

 

“You can call me Lux if you want. Rhymes with lust… sort of.”

 

"Your name is Lux?"

 

“Not my full name but, if I told you that I'd have to kill you.” he smiled, wiggling his eyebrows.

 

He still has Zayn's sarcastic mannerisms so Liam can tell he's only joking. He briefly wonders if some part of that actually is Zayn or if this demon just so happens to have a morbidly peculiar sense of humour too.

 

Knowing his name gives Liam a weird sense of intimacy. Like he's now crossed some kind of border of being a _thing_ inside of Zayn to being _Lux_ in Zayn's body.

 

"Why are you telling me all this? I mean, why didn't you just kill me the first time you saw me... the night of the fire?"

 

Lux sits his chin in his hands as he looks at Liam, shrugging.

 

"I think you deserve to know what's happened to you."

 

Liam’s eyebrows raise.

 

“And the other one?”

 

Lux looks past Liam briefly as he thinks about it.

 

“I dunno. You were scared and I didn’t really get a good look at you before I realised who you were. I already told you... I like you.”

  
Liam squints at him.

 

“What do you mean you realised who I was?"

 

Lux has a moment where a pinched expression flashes across his face like how Zayn’s does when he doesn’t know how to answer something.

 

"Um, that's like 100 questions. It's my turn now." Lux says instead.

 

"You already know everything about me."

 

"I know everything _Zayn_ knows about you. Do you tell Zayn everything?"

 

Liam shakes his head slowly. There were some things he couldn't know.

 

“Well, then I guess we can both learn something new about you.” He smiles.

 

"Can he hear me...?" Liam asks, bending down in front of the bed. Lux nods.

 

"He can hear everything you've said. In fact," his eyes disappear "he's looking at you right now."

 

Liam stares into the void. The void stares back at Liam and transcends beyond Zayn's face as Liam focuses on it like he can see right through him, and look at what’s inside his body. Looking at him now, he doesn't see any monster or Zayn. He sees _nothing_ … not even darkness. He really doesn't have a face.

 

"Is there a way he can... talk to me?" Liam says slowly. Lux pulls away then, throwing his head back as he begins laughing hysterically on the bed.

 

"Wow, you really are a little demon, aren't you? You’re really trying to trick me into letting Zayn take over." He says, incredulously. Liam closes his eyes.

 

"I must admit it almost worked. Persuasion is very hard. Yours is _quite_ strong although you could stand to develop it better.”

 

Liam stands up then, deciding that he needs to go home and figure this shit out. He's confused as hell as to what to do now, like always, but he's sure staying here and continuing to entertain this visitor from hell isn't going to solve anything.

 

Sure, he was being harmless now but, that was only because he wasn't hungry. Once he started getting hungry again, someone else was gonna die. Just because Liam was immune to being eaten by an incubus now didn't mean he was any less on edge about it.

 

"Look, this has all been _truly_ eye opening but... I'd like to go home now."

 

Lux sits on the bed crossing his hands behind his head and one leg over the other.

 

"Why? Don't you enjoy spending time with your best friend? Slash soul mate…. slash boyfriend…”

 

"Well, none of those things are here." Liam quickly puts on his shoes, unable to help smiling to himself when he does it in only a few seconds. Maybe this demon stuff wasn't are be as bad as it seemed.

 

 _"But I'm sitting right here,"_ Lux says slowly. Liam smiles sweetly at him.

 

"Not quite in the way I'd like you to be babe." He sighs, heading towards the door. Lux sits up suddenly.

 

"Wait!" His hand lifts up and the door slams back shut when Liam opens it. He freezes, growing a bit anxious that he wasn't gonna let him leave.

 

"You don’t want to get to know your new body better? You're not gonna learn anything about demons reading from what silly humans think about us."

 

Liam tilts his head from side to side.

 

"I think I can figure it out on my own."

 

Lux’s legs open up then as he sits back, sliding his hand over his crotch leisurely.

 

"There's some things you can't do on your own isn't there? Maybe you could even teach me something too.” He says, casually holding his (or Zayn's) dick. Liam swallows, feeling sweat bead at his head. Obviously, he meant more than _teaching_.

 

"Come ‘ere." He beckons for Liam "I wanna show you something."

 

It’s like that phone call from the day after the fire has come to life, only Liam can't just hang up on him and run away now. Well, he _could_ … but he doesn't really want to.

 

Liam doesn't know why he feels compelled to come over. There's nothing foreign reaching inside of him. No all-consuming lust or sudden urge to want to have sex. Not in the supernatural kind of way anyways.

 

Liam does as he says, kicking off his shoes again and coming back over. Lux stands up and gets behind him, absolutely no room between them as he turns Liam around so he's facing the same way, looking into the full-length mirror on Zayn's wall. The demon hooks his chin over Liam's shoulder.

 

 _“That's persuasion by the way,”_ Lux says quietly with a smile.

 

_“Invite anyone you want to do whatever you want and you’ll lift their inhibitions. A demon's tongue can tempt anyone.”_

 

Liam didn't mind his tongue tempting him… _whoa, what the hell was he thinking?_ Liam occupies his mind with something else.

 

They both check out Liam's new appearance, Liam looking at himself in awe. He rarely ever looked into the mirror before. The honest truth of it was he never found himself attractive enough to muse over his looks like most teenagers did anyways, which is what made him space out. Now, as he looked at himself... it was like he couldn't look away. He _did_ look different.

 

His skin was flawless, even the moles he's always hated gone, not a single imperfection aside from the birthmark on his neck. His eyes are brighter and richer in brown. His jaw seemed more defined, cheekbones more prominent. Even his hair was healthier looking, standing up perfectly quaffed on its own without Liam having even touched it in a week. So maybe this demon stuff wasn't bad at all…

 

"There are millions of different species of demons. I am an _incubus_ because I’m a sin of desire.”

 

Liam nods. He supposes the guide really was inaccurate. It didn't say anything about sins. It said an incubus was a demon of impurity.

 

“Some are made here in your world, similar to you, and some are made in underworlds, like me." He starts, tracing under Liam's chin to the side of his cheek.

 

“An incubus is always strikingly beautiful no matter what physical form we take. You’ll always radiate an aura of attractiveness. Inducing desire and pleasure will always come naturally to you. Especially when you _fuck_.” he smiles. Liam shivers.

 

He’s just dripping with sex. Liam almost groans just from the sound of his voice in his ear. Zayn’s voice.

 

“You can have anyone in the palm of your hand just from _one look,_ ”

 

He holds Liam’s palm to his mouth and kisses him, somehow making it look dirty that way he makes his lips linger. Liam swallows.

  
“Like… mind control?”

 

“No. I can't control your mind. You’re just too _weak_ to resist me.”

 

Liam didn't need him to tell him that without him knowing already. Lux continues on.

 

"Sometimes demons have bodies that can travel back and forth on different planes of existence. Other times, they don't have a body and can't get around much without one… like me. Being bodiless makes me _asomatous_.”

 

"But... you're here now."

 

"That's one of the beauties of the _human_ body." He whispers, lips ever so slightly touching Liam's ear as his hand runs down Liam's back, making him shiver.

 

“You can do anything with it. My pit mixing into your blood has transformed your body into a half-blood daemon… which is just an old way of saying demon." His hands reach under Liam's shirt and takes it off, revealing abs that were definitely not there before. Liam gapes at his own toned stomach.

 

“I’m a… half-blood?”

 

Lux nods.

 

"Unlike me sitting in this fully human body” He rolls his eyes at that notion, like having Zayn’s body wasn’t something to be in constant gratitude for.

 

“ _Your_ body isn’t fully human anymore. I still have to appeal to the functions of a human. You don’t have to feed constantly. Or sleep. Or even blink if you don't want to. It's virtually perfect." His hands slide up Liam's stomach slowly, then back down, kissing over Liam's shoulder. His hand teases around Liam's waistband, making him breathe all shaky. Liam's eyes close.

 

“Your body is _beautiful_.”

 

"Have you ever been... h- human before?" Liam asks.

 

"Not quite." He sighs "I came from a human. He was tricked into lusting after his own image in his reflection. He fell into a marsh that he was curse to stare into, lead him right into the underworld. He bargained all his sins in exchange for freedom from eternal damnation, purging us so he could be free of his curse in hell. But I know what humans are like.” his hand goes below the waistband now, sliding down his length as he talks. Liam’s breath catches. His hands felt so good, he could just cry.

 

“I've never seen anything like _you_." Lux kisses his neck. Liam’s head nods back a little, winding his fingers in the nape of his hair as he starts to jerk him off slowly.

 

“Unlike you being the semi-indestructible half-blood you are now, humans are extremely _delicate_ … always at the precibus of destroying their own fragile bodies. They could die at any given moment but they live as if death is ages away.”

 

This conversation took a turn for the morbid. Liam was used to hearing Zayn and Harry talk about this stuff, though. How everyone knows we're all going to die at some point but we all act as if it's in some distant future rather than something that will happen _right now_ ….whenever it does.

 

“Their whole lives stretch out in a self-enclosed loop as they dance around death himself. Once he finally catches them, they go to the other side. But the other side of a loop is a loop. The delicate process of their life spans out all over again as they come into a new body. Until they die again. And again. Forever _. Panta rhei."_ ”He brushes his teeth against Liam’s neck. His mouth falls open as Lux flicks his wrist expertly, feeling his breath drift past his chest and swathe around him.

 

The other side of a loop is a loop. Liam sees an infinite sign. So the does that mean no one ever truly dies? Like, maybe their bodies do but the person inside doesn't. Liam thinks that person inside Lux is talking about is their soul.

 

He seemed to refer to Liam’s body as something totally separate from him, which Liam felt was pretty spot on seeing that he often felt detached from his body. But that was just an error in his brain… right?

 

“One human's entire lifespan is but a series of close calls with death… most times even without their own knowledge. But I find that aspect of human life quite fascinating. After all, how could you know you are alive unless you know you can die?” Liam thrusts in his hand, groaning at the way his voice seems to pierce through him. But it’s not painful. God it feels so fucking good.

 

Liam’s always wondered about what happens when you die. What if people really were just carried on from past lives into the next life, waiting to be reborn after death? There would be no telling how old anyone really is if they went by their souls instead of their bodies. Would you go by counting how many times you've lived… or how many times you've died?

 

"H-how… _oh_ , … how old are you?" He manages to gasp.

 

“I don't have a soul babe.”

 

Liam bites on his lip. Right. He eats souls.

 

“You were still created weren't you?”

 

Lux shrugs.

 

"Nars didn't create me… more like got rid of me."

 

“Who's Nars?”

 

“The human that purged his demons into hell.”

 

"So... how long ago was that-" Liam grunts when his orgasm pushes out of him. He almost caves in on his knees but, they're strong enough now to hold out the pressure.

 

He smiles as he continues to tug Liam all the way through his endless orgasm, then pulls his hand out. So he doesn't want to tell Liam how old he is…

 

“Is Nars still alive?”

 

Lux’s fingers come up to Liam’s mouth then, probably so he'll stop asking about Lux personally. He seemed to have a tendency to avoid talking about certain things like how Zayn does.

 

Liam just automatically swallows it, sucking them clean, tasting himself. He thought that should’ve really grossed him out, tasting his own jizz but the sight of Zayn's fingers in his mouth is already making him hard again. Lux smiles when he licks it all, pulling them out and leaning down behind Liam.

 

“Yes. He's still alive.” he surprisingly answers.

 

Liam would ask if he'd ever go back to him instead of being a demon but, it's getting harder to focus the longer Lux touches him. Like each sensation brings on a stronger wave of pleasure the longer he stands here.

 

"I thought beings like you were a _myth_." His tongue traces down Liam's back then, throwing all his thoughts out the window.

 

He breathes out deeply, feeling his heartbeat steady, focusing on that instead of the tongue sliding dangerously close to below his lower back side.

 

He pulls Liam’s sweats down, pooling around his ankles. Liam's dick didn't look that much different. He doesn't know if that should be disappointing or not.

 

Lux looks at it in the mirror briefly.

 

“Huh… I guess you were already pretty well endowed.” He shrugs, making Liam blush as he goes back to tracing the outside of Liam’s body with his tongue.

 

“An incubus can make anyone cum as many times as they want.” He continues with his lesson of sex demon basics 101 for dummies.

 

“Do you eat everyone you have sex with?”

 

Lux laughs briefly, which tickles against Liam's ass. He meets his eyes in the mirror.

 

“ _Obviously not_.”

 

“I mean,” Liam closes his eyes, “I thought an incubus only has sex to eat.”

 

“Whatever you've been reading in those books of yours is nonsense. They paint us to all look like savage beasts. Every demon is different. We don't live to eat humans. The only reason I have to now is because of the bloody sacrifice. I have sex because it’s fun. I eat once every moon cycle, not every time I fuck someone. They might die or get sick but that's only if they're human.”

 

“What about something that's... _not_ human?” Liam finds himself asking. Lux suddenly steps in front of him and pushes Liam to sit down on the bed. Liam can see he's also hard.

 

"I'm just as curious about that as you are. I've never fucked a daemon before.” He says getting on his knees as he kisses in between Liam’s legs, sliding his hands up his thighs. Liam would ask what the difference between a demon and daemon is exactly but at this point, he doesn't even care.

 

Liam leans back with his hands behind him, watching Lux close his eyes and as he licks him, his tongue dragging up from Liam's balls to the tip making his mouth fall open.

 

He can't look away from him. When Liam looks at him in the eye, all he can see is a seductive, faceless demon. But with his eyes closed like this, he just looks like Zayn again.

 

Liam doesn't know why he's letting him do this again. Like, maybe Liam should stop him. Maybe he's abusing Zayn's lack of control over his body right now but, a little part of him was maybe hoping if he just let it happen, Zayn would take over again. Or maybe he was just-

 

"How many times do you wanna cum? I noticed your erections last for a quite a bit of time.” The question intercepts Liam's thoughts. He blinks down at him a few times. It's just a natural reaction to blink. He could probably stare for hours and never have to blink in all honesty.

 

"Uhh..." He shakes his head quickly "I… I don't care."

 

Lux smiled, grasping Liam's dick in his hand and massaging it casually. Liam exhales deeply, closing his eyes.

 

" 'm thinking 3? I'm not very generous." He says. He mouths over and swallows the tip, one hand stroking him while the other massages his balls. Liam grabs onto the back of his hair. He knows Zayn likes that.

 

His head nods back when the demon’s head begins to move up and down, sucking like a pro. It's honestly giving him life.

 

"Oh my... _God_ ," he gasps, trying to stop himself from moving his hips too much. The last time he did that in the shower, Zayn almost choked. Or Lux? He still wasn't sure. But that might've been from the water. He's heard that Zayn knows how to suppress his gag reflex almost totally. Not that he actively listens to whatever people say Zayn is like in bed...

 

 _“Language please.”_ Lux pulls off briefly with a loud smack to say, then resumes back to sucking the life out of Liam's dick, making him groan in ways that should be considered illegal.

 

Lux hums around Liam, his face scrunching up like he's getting just as much out of this as Liam is. Liam thrusts a little, hitting the back of his throat briefly. Lux doesn't falter, seemingly encouraging Liam to do it more as he takes it until he's deep throating Liam effortlessly.

 

Liam’s grip in his hair tightens, pulling his head down until he bottoms out, feeling his throat clenching around him as he fucks in and out of his mouth and his tongue flicking over him, despite having Liam's entire shaft down his throat. It's not even the impossible tricks that bring Liam to his second orgasm. It's just the image of his long eyelashes resting against his cheekbones, totally relaxed, and all Liam can think about is that this is _Zayn_.

 

He reaches over and brushes his hair away from his face.

 

" _Zayn_ ," as soon as he says that, a loud clap of thunder shakes the room. It startles him and he literally almost bites Liam again but Liam is able to pull out before he can bite down into his thigh.

 

Liam cries out in pain just as he finishes, again, right on his face. It's the most ridiculously hot thing Liam never knew he needed to see, his own ejaculation all over Zayn's cheek and mouth, dripping off his chin as he licks it off.

 

Liam falls back on the bed, tummy rising and falling rapidly, feeling like his bones have melted as he listens to the rain beating against the window.

 

"I'm starting to think you have some kind of fucked up _pain kink_."

 

Liam sits up on his elbows as his sweatpants are pulled back up for him.

 

" _Zayn_...?" He says as he watches him lick his spunk off his pink, slightly swollen lips. He finishes putting Liam's shirt back on for him, then he wipes the rest of his face with his hand, not letting one drop go unswallowed. He glares at Liam right after.

  
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not giving you a third one you prick. You fucking destroyed my _throat_.” he rasps, his voice hoarse as he coughs into his arm.

 

"ZAYN!" Liam bursts with happiness, engulfing him into a bear hug. Even the way he smelled instantly changed, going from that indistinct burning to that rosie Zayn smell.

 

 _"I knew it would work_." Liam sighs. Zayn lets himself be hugged for only a few more seconds before he's roughly shoving Liam away from him.

 

"IDIOT!" He yells at Liam, punching him in the arm.

 

"OW!" Liam hollers, frowning as he rubbed it. Zayn stands up and starts to pace, chest heaving as he breathes in and out rapidly, furious.

 

"Okay, I understand why you're mad... and I'm sorry for doing that to you but it wasn't you! And you're here now! We can just forget all that happened and figure out how to fix this." Liam says as Zayn paced, angrily running his hand through his hair. Zayn shoots daggers at him when he speaks, hitting him again in the same spot.

 

"No, you _don't_ understand! You don't understand ANYTHING at all you stupid, _stupid_ little... _horny_ boy! I can't _believe_ you!"

 

"Stop hitting me! I said I was sorry!" Liam stands up as Zayn groans, looking like he wants to pull his hair out of his head.

 

"God, I even BIT you so he couldn't kill you... or _seduce_ you and you were still gonna fuck _him_. Again! You _knew_ that wasn’t me! You are _fucking unbelievable_!"

 

"Zayn--"

 

"Just stop talking!" Zayn commands, trying to keep himself from lashing out any further. Liam's mouth snaps shut. Zayn brushes his hair back as he shakes his head.

 

 _“Maybe I should just take that as a compliment…”_ He snorts to himself bitterly, then looks at Liam, frowning.

 

“You told him _everything_... what am I gonna do with you?”

 

Liam’s eyes dart to the side, unsure of what he’s supposed to say.

 

"Okay, so this time when I tell you to stay away from me, I actually mean stay _the fuck_ away from me. Don't _talk_ to me, don't look at me, don't _respond_ to anything I or anything else that looks like me says to you, and ESPECIALLY don’t _fuck_ me." Zayn grabs onto his arm, pulling him towards the window.

 

"Why wouldn’t I talk to you?" Liam pulls his arm away. Zayn opens the window, letting the rain pour in.

 

"Why the fuck do you _think?"_ He turns back to Liam, pointing to the window.

 

“I need you to leave, _now_ and don't come back. You're strong enough to resist so I don't want to hear it if he comes to your house and asks you if you wanna fuck.”

 

Liam closes his eyes for a second, feeling crippling regret wash over him. Hooking up with Zayn before could be excused. He wasn't fully in control then. But now, there was no excuse. He was immune to being seduced after Zayn bit him. Anything else he did from that point on was all completely on his own volition.

 

“Wait! Just… hear me out for a second. I know there's no excuse for what just happened but I don't mean to take advantage of your body! I got sick and he brought me back here and he started touching me--”

 

“Liam,” Zayn closes his eyes, but Liam continues.

 

“But that's not a real excuse, I know. I promise you I'll never touch you again just... _please_ don't hate me for this!" He begs. He knew this would happen at some point. The second Zayn was himself again, this would be over. Zayn holds his own head for a second, sighing deeply.

 

" _Liam_ ," he shakes his head, the hard look in his eyes softening.

 

"I could never _hate_ you. _Never_. God, how can you even think that?"

 

"I just-"

 

"Forget what happened just now. Or don't ,, it really doesn't matter." Zayn says dismissively "I'm not angry that you didn’t stop him. I mean, I am but, I also don't know anyone that would turn down a blowjob from an expert. I’m not trying to punish you for falling for a demon's tricks.”

 

Liam doesn't interrupt to tell him he didn't exactly fall for any kind of trick.

 

"I'm trying to protect you."

 

" _You're_ trying to protect _me?"_ Liam repeats, dubious "You're the one whose soul is slowly being trapped in your own body which is being taken captive."

 

"I'm fucking _aware_." Zayn says through clenched teeth "What you don't understand is you fucking told him I bit you and showed him your body and practically waved your pretty little ass in his fucking face and I’ve _literally_ been going to hell and back trying a way to get my own body back and now I have to worry about you too-"

 

Some more thunder sounds in the distance, making Zayn jump. He closes his eyes in annoyance with himself.

 

Liam closes the window and holds onto Zayn's shoulders as he sits them down, far away from the rain.

 

"Zayn. Slow. Down," Liam says calmly. He could barely understand what Zayn was saying. He was talking a mile a minute. Zayn breathes out slowly.

 

"I don't have a tonne of time here so, please just try to follow." He says, pacing himself. Liam nods

 

"Start from the top."

 

"Okay. Obviously, you know this thing is living inside of me feeds off people."

 

"Sex demon." Liam nods.

 

"Exactly. He uses sex to lure people to their death. 2 weeks ago, when he came to you, he was gonna kill you,"

  
Liam blinks once with furrowed eyebrows.

 

"But... he said--”

 

"Liam!" Zayn yells, balling up his fist for a moment and breathing steadily again, trying to contain his anger, so he won't snap. Liam stops talking right after.

 

"I _know_ what he said! I was there. It doesn't matter if he didn't intend to hurt you. It was gonna happen anyways. Humans having sex with demons almost always ends in death. If not death, then really fucked up illness that ruins your health forever. Like an STD.”

 

Liam nods. He knew that much already.

 

"That’s why I had to bite you. It's almost like a vampire thing. You just... change after. People don't survive because demons don't usually leave anything left behind still breathing. That's what happened to Niall. You share the same properties of the to that bit you since some of his pit is yours now. Your body just... functions differently than it used to."

  
He uses that word again. His pit. He wonders if that's what he's been feeling sitting in the pit his stomach for the last two weeks. Like a block of solid steel.

 

"Like... a hybrid?"

 

"Yes exactly! Like... Cyborg from teen titans, only instead of being half robot, you're a daemon or half-blood. It's the same thing"

 

"What's a daemon?"

 

"It's a demon but not from hell. You're still of a nature somewhere between gods and humans. The point is, it saved your life and now he knows what you are and he wants you. As in your body.”

 

Liam looks down at his hands.

 

"Whoa... wait," he looks up at Zayn, confused "What did you mean you're trying to get your body back?"

 

"We'll be stuck together forever in a few weeks and I'll be turned into a monster. I’ve been trying to find this place in Lust where I can purge him. It's at the bottom of the narcissus marsh but I can't fucking swim let alone try dive into that thing without drowning. Lust is below Earth's surface but you can't get there without finding a gateway, like the one a the bottom of marsh. If I can't find the one at the marsh, I might have to just stay in Lust. It's like--"

 

"Hell?!?" Liam shrieks, standing up "Are you mental!?"

 

Zayn winces, holding his temples delicately.

 

"Liam," he says with strain, breathing rigidly "I know it sounds horrible but in case you haven't noticed, I'm a bloody demon now? And demons aren't meant to live outside of the underworld on the surface. I’m not supposed to exist here like this. I can still live here without dying but _trust me_ , it isn't easy. It's like breathing with a paper bag over my head _constantly_. Demons don't belong with _people._ ”

 

Liam can't panic now. Him panicking will make Zayn panicky and they are in no position to waste time freaking out over every little thing that happens. Well, Zayn going to hell wasn't little but, the fact still remains. Liam has to stay calm so Zayn can stay calm too.

 

“It doesn't matter to me what you are.” Liam says, bending back down so he's in front of Zayn, holding onto his shaking hands “You don't have to go back, right?”

 

Zayn's pinched expression says yes.

 

“I have to. Soon… like, any minute now, which is why you need to leave as soon as possible or you’ll get dragged back with me.”

 

“Well, that’s perfect because I'm going with you.”

 

Zayn pulls his hands away, shaking his head as he goes back to the window.

 

“The only place you're going is out of my house and _far away from me_.”

 

“Zayn,” Liam complains “Let me help you--”

 

 **“YOU CAN'T FUCKING HELP ANYTHING! IF YOU COME YOU’LL NEVER LEAVE!”** his voice booms like thunder itself, practically blowing out Liam's eardrums but, it's only his voice talking so he at least didn't summon Lux this time.

 

Liam is suddenly picked up into the air then as a steel cloth wraps around his waist and snatches him forward from across the room by unseen forces, yanked right over to Zayn without him even having to touch him. Zayn tugs him towards the window right after.

 

“There’s all kinds of dangerous, bodiless creatures on the other side of our world. If you come, you’ll risk being killed. You’re not immortal. If you die in the underworld, you stay there forever. There's no way I'm letting you EVER go there. I told you can’t come with me.”

 

So _that’s_ where Zayn said he had to go to get “fixed”. Holy… _hell_.

 

“He wants you and he can't have you so you have to stay away from me from now on. I just need a little _time_ \--”

 

Liam stops them, holding onto the window sill so hard, it cracks.

 

“So what? If you don't find some way to get him back where he belongs, you're gonna go live in hell to stop yourself from having my body? I don't think so.” That sentence was worded a bit off but, Zayn gets what he's trying to say anyways.

 

“This isn't about just _you_ , bean. If I'm still here and this evil is still inside of me, everyone is in danger and if you seriously think I'm letting you sacrifice yourself for me then you really are out of your goddamn mind.”

 

“But he’s not violent.”

 

“Liam you have to forget whatever he said to you. He’s a DEMON. He's EVIL! He doesn't really care if he hurts anyone or not. If he did, he wouldn't have had sex with you knowing you were human and wouldn't survive. He’ll say anything to get what he wants. He’ll lie to you and pretend that he likes you and persuade you into doing something you shouldn't. I can't stay here with it inside me, it’s too dangerous. This is not up for a debate!”

 

“Zayn,” Liam sighs, feeling his eyes well up.

 

“You can't sacrifice yourself for everyone. Your life is in danger too. We can find another _way_ -”

 

 _“I've already been sacrificed!”_ he hisses.

 

“Yeah and _that was my fault!_ You didn't fucking deserve what happened to you. And you’re not dead so stop talking like your life is already over and let me just… help you please.” his voice cracks in the middle of his plea and Zayn's face crumbles right after, holding Liam's hand between his tightly.

 

_“Lima--”_

 

A loud bang that sounds exactly like thunder comes directly from Zayn's closet, making him practically jump out of his skin. Liam holds Zayn into himself, also terrified as they look at the closet. He's not sure if it was always glowing like there's a fire behind it or if that's something that's just happened.

 

 _“Zayn… what is that?”_ Liam whispers.

 

“ _Shit_.” he mutters, quickly reaching behind Liam to open the window, holding his waist tightly, shaking. Even as a demon he's still afraid of thunder.

 

“It's a portal. Like a gateway to other worlds. I opened it 2 weeks ago since I can't swim through that deep marsh. I don't have time to argue with you about this. It’s gravitational pull is way too strong. I’m too close to it and you're too close to me. It's gonna pull us in right now if we continue to stand here like this!” he pushes Liam out on his back.

 

“Wait don’t!” Liam grabs Zayn’s arm, expecting himself to be falling out the window like how he did when they were kids pretending to be superheroes after Zayn pushes him but… he floats out on his back, _weightless_. Liam looks down at the ground, shocked then back at Zayn.

 

“Put me down!” he yells. He’s terrified of heights.

 

“It's not me,” Zayn explains “You're floating. I don't have time to show you how to float. You can make yourself float down. But you have to let go of me.” he tries to pry Liam off his arm but Liam clings him desperately as his stomach drops when he looks down.

 

“Baby, I know you're afraid. I'm… I'm _scared_  shitless too but it's alright to have fear. If you just let go of it you'll float. You’re not gonna fall.”

 

Liam looks back at Zayn, feeling like his heart is being strangled. He didn't want to let go. He couldn't.

 

“You have to trust me right now. I’m not gonna let you hurt yourself,” he says gently.

 

Liam looks at the ground then back at Zayn, looking between his eyes. He nods quickly. Of course, he trusts Zayn. He didn't trust his own body, though. But he didn't care about whether he was gonna keep floating or not. He couldn't let go of Zayn.

 

“Go straight home and _stay home._ If you see me this week, don't talk to me… _me_ as in _him_. If _he_ talks to _you_ , which he will, don't tell him anything I've told you this time, and don't let him trick you into talking to him. He doesn't know what I've been doing so if he sees you, he's gonna ask you again what happened.”

 

Liam nods again.

 

“Okay I get it, don't tell him anything.”

 

Zayn pulls him by the collar of his shirt, shaking his head with a dark expression.

 

“I _really_ need you to get me here so you listen closely and soak in _every word,_ ” he says in a low voice. Liam swallows.

 

“Unless it's _me,_ don't let that asshole ever touch you again. I don't care if he can give you the greatest blowjob of your life. I don't want him anywhere near you. Don't go home with him. Don’t talk to him. Don't let him crawl around in your body or sit in your lap or take off your fucking clothes and don’t _FUCK_ him. And if _you_ ever kiss him again, _I will kill you my fucking self_.”

 

Liam nods slowly, definitely getting him.

 

“I would let you stay but, you'll be too close to me when the portal opens all the way, and you'll get pulled in too. It's impossible to avoid up this close.”

 

“Then just come with me back to my house.” Liam tries to bargain but Zayn shakes his head, leaning his forehead regretfully against his window.

 

“It’s not that simple. I’m not closing it until I've got my body back. I have to go back as many times as I can _while_ I can before the next full moon on Halloween. It closes in the morning in it's own. I think I can get back out before then but it'll open in a couple days if I don't.”

 

 _“You think??”_ Liam shrieks _“What about your family?”_

 

“No one can come through it without me since it's forged with my blood. And they're human anyways. They can't come through it. Nor can they hear or see anything, they'll be fine. Lima, _you have to go now_.” Zayn shakes his head, scrunching up his face as he goes to shut the window.

 

Liam stops him, 100% panicking now because the gates to hell are literally opening in Zayn's room and he’s about to be swallowed in it.

 

“Zayn wait!” he shouts, planting his feet on the side Zayn's house as he floats in the rain. He honestly feels like fucking Batman right now… if Batman could fly.

 

“I know you don't want me to go but… you have to give me _something!_ How will I know when I'll see you again?” Liam couldn't bring himself to think he really wasn't ever going to see Zayn again. It wasn't a possible thought.

 

“Liam it's opening!”

 

“Promise me you'll come back.” He feels like Zayn is trying to say goodbye without actually saying it. He's not good at goodbyes and Liam is not good with letting go.

 

Another bout of thunder comes from Zayn's room. He looks back at it. Liam can actually feel it pulling him towards Zayn like a vacuum.

 

_“Zayn!”_

 

He looks back at Liam, all kinds of conflicting emotions etched across his face. Pain and fear but also somehow… hope.

 

_“Promise me.”_

 

He grabs Liam's wet cheeks, mostly from the rain but also little tears mixed in, and looks him in the eyes for a moment before he kisses him. When Liam kisses him back, it’s like his entire life flashes before his eyes. Well, not his entire life. Just his life with Zayn. A film of 17 years worth of moments happening in one single kiss.

 

It's all from Zayn's perspective. Even them at this window right now as Zayn shows him everything he's seen through his eyes until Zayn pulls away, leaving the memories trembling on his lips like dew drops on a flower. That constant feeling of being connected to Zayn is no longer just a feeling anymore but somehow palpable now. Like he showed Liam there's an invisible tether between them.

 

“I promise I'll… come back to you.” he sighs.

 

“You’re clairvoyant so, you’ll see where I am when you look for me like how I just showed you, okay? Just don't follow me if you see I'm not in Manningtree. _Ever_.” he smiles tightly, then gently pushes a dazed Liam away.

 

“Bye Lima.”

 

Liam snaps out of it, leaning in again to steal another one… just cause. Zayn makes a muffled, anxious sound but his hand still holds the back of Liam's head and his shirt collar as he pulls him in and let's him kiss him again.

 

This time there's no surge of clairvoyance or anything else supernatural. It's sweet and soft and feels like they're swimming through a field of rose petals against a pink sunset and… it's over way too soon. Zayn abruptly shoves him out completely and shuts the window before Liam can even open his eyes.

 

Liam watches through the window as Zayn opens his closet, revealing an entire universe on the other side. Suns, moons, stars and space, planets, creatures floating and flying around. It's not fire at all but an explosion of light like he's holding everything that exists in his wardrobe. It was something straight out of a comic book.

 

Liam gapes at it. Zayn doesn't even have to jump into it. A funnel that looks like a tornado full of lightning, thundering loudly forms, literally sucking him into it. It engulfs him completely and in the next instant, he's gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be called "Pink". I promise it'll be happy!


	5. Pink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam's demon powers surface in unexpected ways. He learns more about Lux's past and he and Zayn learn new things about each other. Meanwhile, Harry and Lux have a moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of demon powers in this one... sex demon and that *wink wink* 
> 
> Massive HUGE amazing thank you to everyone who left all your wonderful comments, I'm shocked you are in love with this fic. Y'all are awesome and I love that you love it too wow ❤️️
> 
> I hope you enjoy this one :)

 

 

 

"So you can fly?" 

 

Out of everything Liam told Harry about what happened last night, all he got was that Liam could fly. Liam tiffs his head while he's at his locker.

 

"You know, you'd think your biggest concern about this entire situation would be Zayn stumbling around in another _dimension_ somewhere trying to go to literal hell to find a way to get his body back before he's turned into a _man-eating monster_ but no. It’s that."

 

Harry leans against the locker next to Liam's.

 

"It sounds like Zayn's got a pretty solid plan. He's been going there almost every day and coming back for the last 2 weeks. Obviously, it's not as dangerous as our nonsensical pop culture and multimedia have made it out to be and I'm usually the superstitious one here."

 

Liam's eyes roll up to the ceiling as he shakes his head and groans.

 

"Two months ago, we didn't know any of this shit even existed and now we're _living_ it. It's not like we're gonna have first-hand knowledge about it. You sound like Lux." Liam grimaced.

 

_"Lux?"_

 

"That's what he said his name is."

 

Harry laughs at that.

 

"Seriously? _Lux the lustful lascivious demon."_ Harry's brows knit together.

 

"That doesn't sound of a very evil name."

 

"He said it's short for something else so..."

 

"Lux… maybe it could be short for A _lux?_ Or A _lux_ is? Or _Lux_ tina. How do you know it’s even a boy? Lux could be a girl."

 

Liam shrugs silently. An incubus is a male sex demon. He didn't care what his name was. He hated him and wished he'd just go away so their lives could return to normal. He knows that's not going to happen. Whatever happens, nothing would ever be the same again.

 

"So did you have sex again?"

 

Liam slams his locker shut.

 

"No."

 

"Ah, I see. Just a blowie then?"

 

Liam doesn't say anything, hiking up his bag as he walks away.

 

"I'm actually more shocked that I'm now living in a world where you and Zayn are hooking up on what is becoming a regular - no _daily_ \- basis than I am about the two of you becoming demonic creatures from the underworld. Amazed really."

 

"I know you find humour in everything Haz but, I've spent literally every waking hour replaying the image of Zayn being sucked into a vortex that leads to God knows where and no amount of joking around about it is going to make me feel any better."

 

He looked so tired. Not physically. Mentally tired. Stressed out. Harry does really feel for him. He was stressing inside too. He swears his hairline has even been receding so he's been wearing bigger headbands than usual.

 

He puts one arm over Liam's shoulder as they walk down the hall, trying to translate that he wasn't going through any of this alone.

 

"I've been thinking about this nonstop too. I know it doesn't seem like it but I'm just as worried about what's happening on the other side of this world right now as you are. Honestly, I'm fucking terrified Liam. I guess me trying to lighten the mood is just like... a reflex."

 

Liam sighs deeply. He knew humour was Harry's way of processing stress. The stress of wondering what the hell was going on. The stress of waiting for something to happen. The stress of not knowing what to do... there was just a lot on their minds right now.

 

Zayn didn't come to school today and Liam could barely even see him. He has no idea if he made it out of the portal in time or if he had control of his body or if he was in any sort trouble.

 

He didn't know how to use the clairvoyance Zayn showed him. It was too blurry to decipher. Like a bad cell phone reception. He doesn't know how to use _any_ of his dumb powers.

 

It took him ages to get home last night, floating around in the rain for hours, clinging to rooftops so he wouldn't float into the damn sky until he climbed through his window and collapsed on the floor only to come to school 1 hour later.

 

The tether was still there though and he could follow it if he wanted but, Zayn told him not to so he was kind of at a loss.

 

There was just a lot happening right now and the worst part of it all was life here in Manningtree just moved on like everything was normal. The sky was falling but, only Liam could see it. No one batted an eye at anything out of the ordinary anymore. Everyone was just going through the motions day by day, waiting for the next catastrophe.

 

If it were possible for all this to pause for a moment so he could _breathe_ for once, maybe he wouldn't feel like he's actually losing his sanity.

 

In one of the books he read, it spoke of a place outside of time that existed in the middle of the multiverse. The multiverse being every universe that exists. _Ever_. If you go there, time didn't exist no matter how long you stayed.

 

At the centre of everything, you don't age but everything outside of it continues on like normal. It was like the pause button of life. Liam was sort of thinking about trying to find it.

 

After seeing what was in Zayn's closet, it could be possible. Like, maybe if they went there, things could calm down, even if it was for a moment. But even a moment outside of time is an eternity. Hell… maybe they could even stay there. Harry always talked about travelling the world. Now they know they have a portal that leads to everywhere possible. Maybe they all could go. Liam, Harry and Zayn.

 

“Hey, I've been thinking about something recently,” Liam starts. Harry's eyebrows raise.

 

“About this place, I read about at the centre of the universe or whatever,”

 

“You think the multiverse is real? I thought you didn't believe my psychedelic pseudoscientific theories?”

 

“Of course it's real. What _don't_ you believe at this point?”

 

Harry shrugs.

 

“Okay. Point taken.”

 

“Anyways… I was thinking about the portal Zayn opened in his room…”

 

“You wanna go there don't you?” Harry sighs.

 

“Why not? I mean think about it. Every day, we're just getting closer and closer to the end of the harvest season, a.k.a. Halloween. According to the Enchiridion, that's when all sacrifices are sealed meaning there are only 2 weeks until Zayn is totally lost in his body. Possibly forever. Maybe if we went there and time stopped, it would stop the curse from sealing the demon in his body!”

 

Liam does this thing where he'll get really excited all of the sudden and his face will light up with this grin that takes over half of his face like his whole head is smiling. Right now as the idea forms in his head that maybe this can be the answer to Zayn's dilemma, he excites himself into his bright grin.

 

“That could absolutely work!” he chirps. Harry laughs. Happy and hopeful Liam full of light again was the best thing he could see right now.

 

“I mean I guess it couldn't hurt to try. But how are we gonna just disappear for 2 weeks since time will continue like normal here? And even if it worked, he’d lose his body the moment he came back to earth. Just because you're a daemon doesn't mean you won't suffocate in that portal.” Harry points out. Liam nods, rubbing hits chin thoughtfully as they went.

 

“I know. I haven't really thought this all the way through yet but… I think we can figure it out.”

 

Liam starts throwing out more possibilities as they go but Harry stops them when they round the corner, eyes bulging at what he sees at the end of the hallway. His whole face goes white like he’s seen a ghost.

 

“Hey, do you wanna get out of here? We should go out for lunch. We can talk about this more in depth then.” Harry suddenly starts to usher them back around the corner in the other direction. Liam looks at him, bemused.

 

“I know our lives are in shambles right now but, I don't want to start skipping class again--”

 

“We don't have to skip the whole day!” Harry insists, pulling him away.

 

“Just for like 20 minutes. I'm starving.”

 

“Lunch is in less than 2 hours. You'll be fine.” Liam tuts dismissively, trying to continue on but Harry grabs his shoulders and whips him back around roughly.

 

“I _really_ won't.”

 

Liam frowns at him.

 

“Harry what's gotten into you? You know I hate skipping class if I don't have _to_ …”

 

When Liam turns around, his heart feels like it stops when his eyes land on what's in front of them.

 

It's Zayn, standing there right down the hall. He's here all in one piece, perfectly fine and charmed and... sucking on Eleanor Calder's tongue like it's gonna get away from him.

 

"Liam." Harry tries to get him to walk back the other way but, he's impossible to move as he stands there, staring like a deer in headlights.

 

"That’s obviously _not Zayn_. He said to stay away from him, yeah? We need to get out of here before he sees you! Or _me_..."

 

Liam blinks, a little in shock. Even if he knows that's not Zayn, he's never seen him kiss a girl like this in his life. Maybe he'd kiss his girlfriends on the lips as a platonic expression of affection or just in a joking way but... this was full on tongue-shoved-down-each-other's-throats kissing. It was so bizarre to look at, watching him stick his tongue in her mouth and then start to finger her under her skirt right there like they weren't surrounded by dozens of people.

 

He kind of feels bad for whoever's locker they're leaning against. Not that anyone was paying them any mind. They could be fucking in the middle of the hall and everyone would probably just step over them like it wasn't happening, to be honest. A typical day in Manningtree.

 

While Eleanor makes a pained expression, he actually hears her whimpering as she buries her face in his neck despite the massive distance. He makes eye contact with Liam then and smirks as he continues fingering her, whispering dirty things in her ear that’s making Liam’s blood turn into sour milk. Harry gives up on trying to get Liam to move along, leaning against some lockers as he waits for this cirque to be over with his arms crossed.

 

The hall starts to clear out as the bell rings. Liam makes no move to go to class. Eleanor's body spasms against him then, finally finishing as she cries out, the sound of her voice ringing in Liam's ear hauntingly. He makes her lick off his fingers right after, watching Liam the whole time. Maybe Liam is biased but that seemed way hotter when he had Liam doing it last night. Now it just looks obnoxiously pompous.

 

When she finally leaves, he wipes his hand off on his shirt, which is actually one of many shirts he has of Liam's. He makes a mental note to burn it if he ever got it back.

 

"Can we go now?" Harry sighs. Liam finally looks away from the horror show he couldn't tear his eyes apart from, nodding quickly.

 

"Yes. Please."

 

They head back around the corner and of course run smack into Zayn standing there with his hands casually in his pockets, seemingly waiting for them. Harry jumps when he bumps into him but, Liam doesn't flinch, narrowing his eyes at him instead.

 

He was getting used to having these enhanced abilities, being able to easily pay attention to his every move now. So when Zayn seemed to disappear or appear out of thin air, Liam would already be anticipating it.

 

"Hey, _friends_. Long time no see, eh?" He smiles pleasantly.

 

He sounds American all of the sudden and the sound of that accent in Zayn’s voice is possibly the strangest thing Liam has ever heard. Sometimes he sounds foreign. Then he sounds like Zayn. Then other times he sounds like he's from an entirely different time period than them. Not even to mention the _multiple_ voices at once. Doing that with Zayn's voice is seriously psyching Liam out.

 

He's cleanly shaven and his hair is cut short. _Really_ short. The sides are laid back with longer, shiny waves going straight back, like a greaser. He actually cut Zayn's fucking hair after two years of growing it out. Liam's more annoyed that it actually looks really good on him. He looks younger.

 

Liam can feel Harry's heart beating out of his chest but he’s impressively keeping his composure.

 

"I just saw you yesterday." Liam deadpans.

 

"And I’m sure we both _thoroughly_ enjoyed that didn't we?” his accent slips back into Zayn’s as he bites his bottom lip briefly, quirking his eyebrows up and down at Liam, who's fists ball up tighter around the straps of his bag.

 

“I actually wanted to talk to you about that.”

 

Zayn specifically said _not_ to talk to him. He also said not to look at him or respond to anything he says but, that was kind of impossible when he literally appears in front of them in the halls. So Liam shakes his head slowly, backing away.

 

“Harry and I are late for Spanish. Right?”

  
He elbows Harry, who briefly zoned out, too busy staring at Zayn like he was still covered in blood and splattered across his windshield.

 

“Oh y-yeah! _Muy tarde.”_

 

"But I haven’t seen Hazza in ages.” He turns a cold hard gaze to Harry, who swallows thickly. The last time he seen him, he hit him with his car. And before that, they almost got into a fight.

 

"Did you do something different with your hair? I like it. Very stressed."

 

"Thanks. It's probably the stress." Harry smiles, pushing back his technicolour headband nervously.

 

Lux takes out a cigarette, holding it in his mouth as he snaps his fingers in front of it, casually erupting sparks and producing fire straight from his fingertips as he talks.

 

"If it makes you feel any better, I've been feeling a little stressed myself lately. Being hit by a speeding car and left for dead can really put a guy on edge. _Homicidal_ even.”

 

Liam sees Harry tense up in response to that. Harry was hoping there would be no hard feelings about that accident but, honestly, who was he kidding. He hit a demon with his car and ran away. He was a dead man walking right now.

 

“Maybe we could both use a little TLC." His eyes darken a little then, looking Harry directly in the eye as he talks, making him squirm.

 

"When was the last time me and you hung out, just the two of us anyways?"

 

Harry's breath hitches. Liam can feel the blood in Harry's veins start to pound as it travels downwards, straight to his groyne.

 

"I... dunno," he utters. His pupils dilate then.

 

“I think… the end the summer…” his already morbid voice sounds even more dead toned as his jaw slacks.

 

"Lux," Liam's hand rises as he steps forward a bit.

 

" _Stop_."

 

He keeps his eyes locked on Harry's, blowing out smoke through his nose.

 

"Why? Harry seems to have a little built up tension inside he's been hiding since a certain _rendezvous_ over the summer..." Lux’s pupils dilate as well, just stopping short of taking over the white of them. Harry's chest starts to heave as his heart rate kicks up.

 

"You have quite a dirty mind." He laughs, then narrows his eyes “ _I like it_.”

 

Harry’s mouth falls open. Liam knew this kid was secretly a degenerate but, he didn’t ever think it would be the death of him.

 

"You wanna get out of here?"

 

"Yes." Harry immediately agrees.

 

 _ **“NO!”**_ Liam’s voice booms like Zayn's did, startling both Harry and Lux.

 

It startles himself too. The moment they break eye contact, Harry gasps for air, quickly blushing as he tries to adjust himself.

 

Liam and Lux get into a curt staring match then, only there's no seduction being used to entrance anyone this time. Just the wordless gazes of their heavy eyes, both of them feeling each other's hot cores. Only with Liam's, it's anger. Lux doesn't seem to have any real devotion to anything. That burning inside him having no point of reference. Just an empty flame.

 

“You said you wanted to talk to me? Fine. Let’s talk. Just leave Harry alone.”

 

Lux smiles then, his eyes brightening back up as he puts his cigarette out and tucks it behind his ear.

 

“Works for me.”

 

Harry grabs Liam’s arm before he begins to walk away with Lux.

 

“Liam you don't have to.”

 

“I’ll be fine.”

 

Harry looks back up at Lux for a second in front of them, who smiles and waves then crouches down with Liam to talk quietly.

 

 _“Zayn said not to talk to him!”_ He hisses.

 

 _“It's okay, I know what I'm doing!”_ he hisses back.

 

_“No, you don't! You’re a fucking dumbass, he’s just gonna trick you and then you're gonna fuck again and he’ll take your body!”_

 

 _“Cuse me gents,”_ A third voice whispers next to them. Harry and Liam both spring up when he’s suddenly in on the discussion.

 

“Can we get a move on here? I hate to waste time like this when Lima could be fucking me and I could be taking his body.” He says sarcastically. Harry bites his lip but Liam rolls his eyes, starting away.

 

“Whatever just come on.” he grumbles

 

As Liam walks away, Lux watches him go for a moment then looks over at Harry, still standing there as well, shaking slightly as he gulps.

 

"You broke my neck. Did you realise that?" He asks him. Harry shakes his head quickly.

 

"Yes... I mean _no!_ I mean… _I'm sorry I didn't see you!"_ He rushes. Lux snorts and shakes his head.

 

"Lux!" Liam barks, holding a door open that lead to a patio outside

 

"Come the fuck on already!"

 

"Coming babe." Lux smiles charmingly, twiddling his fingers.

 

Liam glares at him then marches outside. Lux’s eyes look downward, watching his backside as he goes. He licks his lips like he's watching a juicy piece of steak walk out the door.

 

"So _sexy_ when he's all angry and demanding innit?" He says, pulling at his shirt collar. He says it more to himself than anything else.

 

Harry awkwardly looks to the side.

 

"Uhhh..." He laughs nervously "Y- yeah. _So_ so sexy. An Adonis really."

 

The smile wipes off Lux' face then, glaring at Harry.

 

“Adonis is a _dickhead_ ,” he says low. Harry's eyes go wide.

 

“You know _Adonis?”_

 

Lux’s eyes disappear suddenly as he backs him into the lockers, Harry falling back as he cowered. His fist punches into the locker next to Harry's face, narrowly missing smashing his skull in as the locker caves.

 

**_"Who I know shouldn't concern you."_ **

 

His multiple voices stab through Harry's entire body, making his bones rattle awfully, just radiating something horribly insidious.

 

**_"You should know that the next time you break anything of mine, I'm going to rip into your soul with my teeth, swallow it, and then shit it out on your grave."_ **

 

It coils inside of him, coming back up his throat and strangling him from the inside.

 

“You get me?"

 

Harry nods with strain, going red, unable to look away from the voids in his face. When he pulls away, Harry wheezed, coughing out for air after Lux releases his body without having even touched him once.

 

His eyes return to normal right after as he smiles, although after all that, there's nothing friendly about that face anymore, if there ever was at all.

 

"See you later in that sexy dream of yours?”

 

Harry nods, holding his throat as he backs away, almost tripping over his feet. He breaks into a run in the opposite direction then. He's never sprinted to class so fast in his life.

 

Outside, Liam paces around the perimeter of the spray rose bushes that encircle the patio. It leads to the parking lot. They planted all the flowers here by mistake a few years ago but, they grew into such a peculiar shape, they turned it into a miscellaneous patio. There were only one lone picnic table and a few lawns chairs scattered in the grass.

 

Liam always found lounging here relaxing. Right now, he was the furthest thing from relaxed. This was the complete _opposite_ of what Zayn told him to do. But he couldn't have him fucking with Harry.

 

He stops pacing for a moment when he feels Lux standing at the door across the patio. Instead of acknowledging that he knows he's there, he looks at the bush of flowers.

 

There were so many, you could barely see the bush anymore, just a takeover of all these pink and red roses. They were so redolent, Liam could smell them without having to lean in, perks of having super senses. He could smell roses all day if you let him.

 

“Why do you smoke?” Liam says when Lux appears next to him, puffing on a cigarette.

 

Lux takes it out, blowing out smoke from the side of his mouth.

 

“So you won't have to smell me burning.”

 

Liam looks at him. That first day he talked to Lux, he started smoking after Liam implied he smelled weird.

 

“Is that really why?” Liam’s voice goes a little high in surprise that he was trying to mask his scent for Liam's sake.

 

“Cigarettes are poisonous to your body.”

 

Lux shrugs.

 

“I like the way these smell.” he picks up one of the flowers and twirls it around his nose, closing his eyes as he smells it.

 

"It’s called a rose,” Liam tells him which makes Lux laugh.

 

“I'm not an idiot. I know what flowers are.”

 

“Well, I didn't think there were _flowers_ in hell.”

 

“Sure there are. They might not smell as good and they don't grow out of the ground like they do here. It’s strange how something that comes from something as disgusting as the ground would smell like this.”

 

Flowers that don't smell nice? No wonder hell was so awful.

 

"Is that why you're here?"

 

He puts out the cigarette and tucks it behind his ear then puts the rose over it crookedly. The flower seemed like a contradiction with him. It made him look soft. He wasn't soft.

 

Liam kind of wants to reach out and adjust it correctly because it's gonna bother him but… that might be creepy.

 

"Is what why I'm here?" He asks with raised eyebrows.

 

"Hell... it's like eternal suffering right? Is that why you came here instead?"

 

Lux shakes his head.

 

"Well, no it hasn't got the best reputation but, I'm not here by choice." He says, walking over to a lawn chair and lounging. Liam follows.

 

"You're not?" He asks, confused.

 

Lux shakes his head.

 

"Then... why are you here?"

 

"I think you're aware that a botched sacrifice took place a while ago?”

 

Liam nods a little.

 

“Well, yeah but-”

 

“When anyone attempts to make a deal with the devil and fucks it up like that - making a virgin sacrifice without using a virgin - the outcome can still be obtained but it leaves behind a curse… like a scar. Demonic transference will always leave a scar. A demon is cursed to be trapped in a world where it doesn't belong just like the human soul is cursed to be forever corrupted. I didn't choose Zayn. He's burdening me just as much as the latter. If he were a virgin like a good little boy, his body would've been properly sacrificed and his soul would have maybe moved on. But instead… here we are.”

 

Liam thinks back to when Zayn told him how hard it was for him to breathe now. So he really wasn't supposed to exist here like this anymore. He’s practically being punished for not being a virgin. Liam closes his eyes. If he hadn't lied about it in the first place... shit.

 

"I'm sorry," Liam says quietly, shaking his head and crouching down in front of him.

 

"This is all my fault."

 

Lux tilts his head to the side.

 

"That's true but, whatever. You didn't know any better so I won't hold a grudge… this time." He says with a shrug.

 

“This actually wasn't your fault. What happened to Zayn he brought on himself. His soul was already destined to be cursed.” he adds.

 

Liam squints. Of course, it's his fault. High Tide would've had better luck taking Liam that night. Come to think of it, maybe that was what was _supposed_ to actually happen.

 

"I'm gonna fix this Zayn," Liam says as he looks into his body. He can still feel him there, however faint it is, Zayn's still in there, huddling in a corner and Liam knows he can hear him. His eyes darken then as his face twist into a contemptuous frown.

 

"And just how do you plan on doing that _bean?_ You gonna send me back to hell?" He asks sweetly, although his eyes are telling a different story. Liam glares at him, standing back up.

 

"You said it yourself. You don't belong here. So that's the idea, yeah."

 

Lux looks up at Liam, unfazed by his proclamation.

 

"Are you gonna send Zaynie to hell as well? Because I'm not going back without him in tow. Wherever I go, he goes. I'm stuck in this body and he's stuck with me. Bound to his soul. _Forever_."

 

Liam blinks a few times.

 

"But... I thought you wanted--"

 

"Wanted what? To take your body?" Lux laughs.

 

“Even if I did, that's impossible. We’re _cursed_ to be together. This isn't a bloody barter and trade packaged deal. If you saw someone with a better body than your own, could you steal it from them?"

 

"No..."

 

"Well, it goes the same way for me. Where the hell did you even get such a ridiculous notion?"

 

Liam doesn't answer but apparently his silence does for him.

 

"Wait..." Lux smirks at Liam "Is that what you thought Zayn told you?" He guesses as he starts laughing. Liam squints at him. After all that talk about how perfect Liam's body was yesterday, it was pretty obvious he wanted it for himself.

 

"What was all that you were saying about my body then?"

 

“I was just admiring the view.” Lux shrugs.

 

“It's not my fault if you can't take a compliment. In fact, it seems we've had a bit of a miscommunication here. I definitely want your body but I think I'd rather have you in me than the other way around.” He laughs which… _okay_. Liam needed to take a time out.

 

He does a double take in his mind. So when Lux said he wanted Liam’s body, he meant… oh. Zayn's warning made a little more sense now.

 

“If that's not what you want then… what did you want to talk about?”

 

“I want you to tell me what Zayn did after he finished you off yesterday.”

 

Liam swallows, wanting to just run away from all of this. Zayn told him not to tell him anything he said so he assumed he shouldn’t reveal what he was doing almost every day either. He didn’t know how he’d react if he knew Zayn was going to hell every day trying to find a way to purge him back where he came from.

 

Lux takes a tired deep breath, stretching out in his lawn chair.

 

“Look, I know he wants me out of his body. I get it. It's pretty cramped in here but, that's not gonna happen anytime soon so he's gonna have to get used to me and get _over_ himself.”

 

He smiles then.

 

“I'm just looking out for his best interest. His well being is _my_ well being and he's gonna get us both killed if he continues to keep _dangerous_ secrets from me.”

 

Liam doesn't make any moves to come closer. Zayn said he's a liar and he’s obviously an expert at manipulating people to get what he wants. It took almost no effort for him to get Liam naked last night. But Liam's senses are heightened. He's not exactly sure how to use his power but he can follow his gut here. That's where his dark pit is after all.

 

“Why should I believe anything you say?”

 

Lux smiles sweetly.

 

“Do I look like a _liar_ to you?”

 

He looks like Zayn.

 

“You’re a _demon_ now. That pit in your stomach is the same as mine in my chest. You can tell me if I’m lying.”

 

Liam feels the pit in his gut, sitting there. _Waiting_. It feels almost alive but not in a sense that it can breathe. Like maybe it can move through Liam's body without Liam if it wants to.

 

He’s not sure _what_ it’s waiting for but he can feel it itching to be touched. He really just wants to know what it is so he can stop freaking out internally about having this evilness inside him. If he can’t control his powers… he’d be no better than Lux.

 

“Why don't we play that game again where we take turns asking each other things we want to know since you obviously need to talk to me just as much as I want to talk to you. That way I get to stare at you and you get your questions answered by an _actual_ source.” Lux gestures to himself lavishly. For someone who hates the body he's in, he sure does seem to like reminding himself he's in Zayn right now.

 

“20 questions?”

 

“Yes, that one! Probably more than 20.” he smiles. Liam hesitates to look back at the school.

 

It wasn't _too_ late to leave now but… he did have a few questions that only Lux could answer. He said Zayn is gonna get them killed and he doesn’t seem like he’s lying about that. It’s not like Liam even knew what Zayn was actually doing when he goes through the portal. Lux’s guess would probably be better than his.

 

“I promise I won't bite you… or try to steal your body.” He assures Liam, with an innocent smile.

 

“Come on then.” he pats his side. Liam goes over to another chair instead, scooting it a few feet away from Lux before he sits across from him.

 

Lux stares at him for a moment until Liam's chair is uprooted from its position on its own, jolting him back as it’s dragged over to be right across from Lux with only a few inches of space between them.

 

“Much better.” he smiles as Liam sits back up slowly. He could just hear Zayn calling him a stupid prick right now.

 

“You can start.”

 

Liam studies him for a moment before asking anything. Lux crosses his eyes comically at him as he stared back, make a funny face. Liam actually has to bite back the urge to smile.

 

“Okay, um…” he clears his throat briefly “Are you bi?”

 

It's the first thing that comes to mind for some reason. Liam doesn't know why it makes him blush to ask out loud but, it does. Lux cants his head sideways slightly as he squints, bemused.

 

“Am I a what?”

 

“ _Bi_. As in bisexual.”

 

That doesn't seem to ring any bells as he stares blankly.

 

“I think you should already know by now that I'm _very_ sexual.”

 

Liam shakes his head.

 

“No, not like that. It’s a sexuality. It means you’re a person who’s attracted to both boys and girls. Like, Zayn is gay because he's a boy only attracted to boys. Then there's straight, which means he'd only be attracted to girls. Our friend Anthony is ace but… I don’t really know what that one means.”

 

“ _Oh_ , you’re asking me if I’m a homosexual like Zayn?” Lux laughs, still seeming a bit confused by the notion.

 

“People usually say gay, straight or bi most of the time.”

 

“Well, that sounds… incredibly stupid.”

 

Liam snorts.

 

“They're just like… labels I guess?”

 

Honestly, Liam doesn't even get why there are so many labels for that kind of thing. Why can't people just like who they want? Like what if you didn’t have a label that fit what you are? That’s how Liam felt sometimes.

 

Lux does that thing Zayn does with his hand when he thinks, rubbing across his face, trailing a line down his jaw with his index finger, feeling for the stubble he's shaved off.

 

It’s that kind of thing that throws Liam off when he talks to Lux. When he does such _Zayn_ gestures but then he talks and… it's not Zayn.

 

“Well, I'm not a person. And I'm not attracted to people.”

 

Stuff like that.

 

“So you're… ace?” Liam squints. That’s what Anthony says. That didn't make sense at all. Lux seems to know that one without any explanations.

 

“Hell no. I _love_ sex.”

 

Liam could guess that himself.

 

“It’s the other way around babe. Men, women, every human on this planet are all attracted to me. And I’m only attracted to you because I'm in Zayn's body.”

 

“You’re _attracted_ to me because of… Zayn?” Liam wills himself not to blush. Lux rolls his eyes as he shakes his head.

 

“Nevermind that. He doesn't like it when I poke around in his brain. To answer your question: I'm not gay, straight or whatever else humans use to label themselves with. Those are social constructs I couldn't possibly live by. Just like I'm not a boy or a girl.” his eyes disappear then.

 

Although he's not touching Liam with his gaze, Liam still feels it and can't look anywhere else but into the holes of his face. It used to be scary, looking at Zayn’s face without eyes but, now… it actually doesn't look scary at all. It's kind of mesmerising actually.

 

“I am _lust_. I don’t have a defined gender or sexuality. I'm not a person but rather an indispensable quality of a person. Lust is an intrinsic part of humanity and nature. A sinful essence of someone’s spirit.”

 

Liam doesn't know how hell that’s possible. If lust is a trait in a person then how is he able to talk?

 

“So… you don't really exist.”

 

Lux pauses for a moment as his expression goes unreadable. He almost looks like... he doesn't know. As fast as the expression comes, it disappears suddenly as he frowns.

 

“Of course I exist. I'm _lust_. I exist in everyone." He says finally, like Liam just asked a ridiculously dumb question. Of course that was a stupid question for Liam to ask him. How could he talk if he didn't exist?

 

"Just because you can't see the wind doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You just can't see or touch me… but I can touch _you_.”

 

His gaze reaches out to Liam from across from him then. A ghostly chill runs up Liam's arms up to his shoulder blades like the invisible hands of a masseuse.

 

“Even though I'm  _asomatous_ , you can still very much feel me wherever you are. Or sometimes even see me. Humans have much more than 5 senses but they don’t pay much attention to their spiritual sense cause it’s usually out of reach to them. But some humans sense more than others. Like people who can see spirits and demons walking among them.”

 

He moves his inconspicuous essence through Liam’s scalp, making his hair tingle. Liam subtly closes his legs so his growing hard-on isn’t obvious. But Lux clearly knows what he’s doing to him. He continues explaining what lust is to Liam with his entrancing voice.

 

“Even though Nars brought the essence of his sin out of him, I still don't have a physical form in this world, which is why I was shoved into this body in order to exist here. Didn't I explain some of this to you already last night?” Lux smirks, his eyes returning to normal as the sensation snaking around Liam’s body vanishes.

 

Like Liam was actually listening to half of _anything_ Lux told him yesterday. The whole time he was talking, he was either jerking Liam off or licking over his body so, it wasn't a lot a focus going down on Liam's part.

 

He nods anyways though, definitely not saying all that to Lux. He thinks he understands now.

 

“Does this mean when you're _not_ in our world, you have a less… spiritual-invisible form?” Liam asks carefully, trying not make it sound creepy. Lux quirks an eyebrow as he smiled.

 

“Are you asking me what I really look like?”

 

Liam shrugs from side to side. He didn't want it to be obvious that he really wanted to know what Lux looks like since he doesn’t identify with any gender. Not that it was weird. Anyone would be curious what lust would look like. Liam was just feeling like an awkward mess right now for some reason. He came out here thinking they were gonna be talking about Zayn but… he found himself wanting to know more about Lux.

 

Lux leans closer to Liam, who starts to back away at first but, stops himself. He looks Liam dead in the eye as he leans his arms over his knees, holding his hands together as he slouches like how Zayn does. He still had his terrible posture.

 

_“What do you see when you look at me?”_

 

Liam looks between both his eyes, obviously only seeing Zayn staring back at him until Lux’s real eyes come back. Liam focuses wholly on gazing into him like he did last time, finding nothing but a void looking back at him now. He shakes his head slowly.

 

“I… don't see anything.”

 

Lux tilts his head to the side slightly.

 

“Really? Because I can see you.”

 

Liam only shakes his head.

 

“You don't see a savage beast with scales and 3 eyes?”

 

Liam rolls his eyes.

 

“You just said you’re a sinful essence. So how can I see _lust_.”

 

“You’ve got demon eyes now. You can see _everything_.” Lux says slowly.

 

“ _Look harder_.”

 

Lux’s eyes are hollow sockets of nothing. Looking into them was like looking into an empty shell of Zayn's body. Liam breathes deeply, continuing to stare into the void, willing himself to see what's inside of Zayn, tapping into that dark part inside of himself to change his vision into something otherworldly.

  
Suddenly, he thinks he can see someone staring back at him and it's not a faceless void… or Zayn, which sends a chill up his spine.

 

His eyes come into view clearly, replacing the nothingness. They're like… Zayn's but grey instead of brown. A very pale glazed over grey with almost no pigment aside from the amber specks scattered in them like little drops of the sun. Like his eyes maybe used to have that colour but now it's faded.

 

He’s got brown freckle just outside of his right iris like Zayn's. His pupil is the size of a spec. His eyes look _old_. He almost looks blind. That's the only thing that he sees. The rest of his face is hidden behind Zayn’s.

 

The sight of someone else's eyes on his face is somehow more shocking than having no eyes at all because now it looks like a whole other person in front of him. Liam’s go wide then, pulling back away from him.

 

“Your eyes are grey?” Liam asks.

 

A microexpression flashes across Lux’s face for a moment before he sits back on the chair until he's lounging with his arms behind his head. Liam is keen enough now to catch it before he goes back to looking nonchalant. It was confusion. Now that his eyes are visible, his face is much more expressive. He actually looks like a person now instead of a faceless demon with black eyes. And Liam just wants to stare at him. He almost looks like Zayn again if Zayn's eyes didn't have very much colour.

 

“Is that what you’re looking at?”

 

He doesn't blink. He squints and narrows them, but Liam noticed his eyes never close completely.

 

Liam nods slowly.

 

“Why can't I see the rest of your face?”

 

Colour floods back into his eyes as they go back to looking like Zayn’s… but they're not really brown. If Liam looks at him from the dark side of himself, he can see Lux’s eyes just beyond Zayn's instead of a void like before, grey right underneath the brown. Like a disguise.

 

Lux shrugs.

 

“I told you, I haven’t got a face. As far as I'm concerned I don't have eyes either.”

 

Liam’s looking at his eyes right now.

 

“Wait… you've never seen your own eyes?” Liam squints, disbelieving.

 

“I've never seen a mirror until I came here. They're quite beautiful objects but as tempting as that is… let’s just say mirrors and I don't get along.”

 

Liam would laugh at that if he wasn't so overcome with amazement. Of course, he'd think mirrors are beautiful. He's in Zayn's body. What kind of beef could someone have with a mirror that'd make them never want to see their own eyes? Maybe that's a hypocritical thing for Liam to think.

 

Liam couldn't imagine not knowing what his own face looks like. He didn't look in the mirror that often before but, that was just a personal choice.

 

“You’ve never been curious about what you look like…”

 

“Sure I have. Zayn's quite sexy isn't he?”

 

Lux wiggles his eyebrows as he grins.

 

Liam shakes his head, not wanting to get into that right now.

 

“That’s not what I mean. What you look like _without_ Zayn.”

 

Lux shrugs carelessly.

 

“I’m guessing I look something like Nars since his other 6 demons look almost identical, give or take a few minor details.” he sighs, not nearly as interested in this topic as Liam would be if he'd never seen his own face before.

 

So when Lux says he doesn’t have a face… what he really means is he’s never _seen_ his face.

 

The admission makes Liam even more curious about Lux before he came here. Of course, there's 7 of him.

 

“7… deadly… sins…” Liam murmurs to himself.

 

He thought Lux was pretty self-obsessed when he first got here but, obviously it was only because he got to look at Zayn's face every day.

 

Lux nods, sitting up straight again.

 

“Yes. The 7 deadly sins of humanity. Everyone has their own demons. But not everyone brings them out. I'm lust, then there's gluttony, greed, sloth, blah blah, yada yada. Enough about me now. Let's get some information out of you next, yeah?” he smiles. Liam swallows but nods. It was his turn to ask something.

 

“Are _you_ bi?” He parrots Liam’s first question. Liam thought he'd ask something more serious.

 

“You can't ask me the same question I asked you. It doesn’t work like that.”

 

Lux rolls his eyes.

 

“Fine. Are you _gay?”_

 

“No.” he answers short and clear. Lux quirks an eyebrow as if to say he doesn't believe him.

 

“You know, your heart jumps offbeat whenever you tell a lie.” Lux smiles.

 

“I'm not! I have a girlfriend!”

 

“ _Had_ ,” Lux corrects him. “Okay, so what are you then? Unless… you don't know either?”

 

“It's my turn to ask.”

 

That makes Lux laugh, clapping his hands together as he bends forward.

 

“Why do I get the feeling you're making up these “rules” to avoid my questions?” he laughs heartily and it almost wants to make Liam laugh too because he laughs exactly like Zayn and it's such a heartwarming sound.

 

“It's okay if you don't know. Sexuality is a spectrum. Your weird labels don't really mean anything.”

 

Okay, maybe Liam is avoiding his questions.

 

“Can I do everything you can?” Liam goes on swiftly, done with the topic at hand. There were some things Liam just didn't like to talk about out loud.

 

“You know like mind control and that.”

 

Lux’s face scrunches up. Liam already knows he can't control his mind. This question is just a distraction.

 

“I told you I can't control anyone’s mind nor do I coerce anyone into doing anything they don't want to do. It’s _persuasion and seduction_. You always have a choice to if you want me. Humans are just easy to seduce because when it comes down to it, they all choose sin no matter how pure they think they are… even a virgin.” he says with a naughty wink. Liam's face heats up as he swallows.

 

“I can show you more of what you can do if you like.” he smiles moving like he's gonna come closer but Liam immediately shakes his head no, leaning back quickly.

 

The last time he “showed” Liam something, he ended up naked and having almost 3 orgasms. Lux tilts his head to the side, frowning at Liam.

 

“You remember me telling you I'm not gonna hurt you, right?”

 

Liam nods slowly realising Lux thinks he's afraid of him still. Well, he kind of is but he's more afraid of what Zayn's gonna do to him if he lets Lux come any closer again. He already knows he’s gonna kick his ass just for talking to him at all.

 

So that really was _Lux_ he was talking to after Zayn went to sleep that night, after the lightning incident. Liam pushes that realisation out of his mind.

 

“You don’t have to show me.”

 

Lux shrugs as he smiles again.

 

“ _Fine_. It's your turn.”

 

Liam thinks for a moment.

 

“Why did you tell Safaa you used to be with Zayn?”

 

There's a small pause.

 

“She’s a child. I didn't want to scare her.”

 

Liam tilts his head to the side. Lux rolls his eyes again. He must be figuring out by now that Liam's not the brightest light bulb in the box.

 

“Children are much more aware of their senses than adults. She knows I'm not Zayn and she can see me, unlike everyone else. She was confused. Was I supposed to tell her that I'm a demon and Zayn has been sacrificed and cursed to feed on human flesh forever?”

 

Liam supposes that's a valid argument.

 

“No… I guess not.” he frowns, although he is glad he spared her innocence. That was actually… really considerate. Even though the idea of a demon chilling out with Zayn's family should be disturbing, from what Safaa told him, he seemed to genuinely like her.

 

His mind drifts, imagining him playing with her in Zayn's room. He can see him letting her jump in his bed, and braiding her hair and even telling her stories about where he's from.

 

Lux waves his hand in Liam's face then, after he zones out briefly, staring at Lux as he sees images of things he's never seen before. Like the clairvoyance, Zayn showed him.

 

“Hello? I just asked you a question.” he brings Liam back to earth, making him blink. Lux smiles when he comes back.

 

“Oh, yeah.” Liam straightens back out, shaking his head to stay focused.

 

“Do you have all of Zayn's memories?”

 

Lux nods once with a small smile. Liam bites the inside of his cheek.

 

“So… is that how you knew who I was the first time you saw me?”

 

There's a beat of silence.

 

“I saw you in a _dream_.” he says.

 

Liam's heart flutters a little for some reason from the way he says that. Liam knows he’s doing that with his voice on purpose. Making him want to keep sitting here and listen to his voice all day.

 

“What was I doing?”

 

Lux tilts his head to the side a little as he looks at Liam with unsettling focus, unblinking. The way he stares almost feels inappropriate. Like when children stare at you in public somewhere and their little eyes seem like they're staring right through your _soul_. That's what Lux’s gaze feels like.

 

“You were lowered into the ground, in a box. And buried.”

 

Liam gets a chill.

 

“So I was _dead_.” He nods, looking down with sullen as he fidgets with his shirt.

 

Lux shakes his head.

 

“You weren't dead. Your body was still alive. You just weren't _there_ with it.”

 

Liam looks back up at him then. Zayn dreams about him being buried alive? Christ that was morbid…

 

“There's things I can't see unless he let's me. But I can see whatever I want when he falls asleep.” Lux adds.

 

Liam’s known Zayn all his life and he's always wondered what it would look like in his mind. Now here was Lux, able to see it all after living with him for only a few weeks.

 

“What can you see? Besides his dreams.”

 

Lux shrugs.

 

“I know he's pretty smart. Read philosophy and poetry and fictional comics... staring at himself, a few things from his past lives… random shit I really don't care about.” he drones on as if he's bored of talking about Zayn.

 

“His… past life?” Liam repeats.

 

Lux nods.

 

“What was his past life?”

 

“Aren't you breaking your own made up rules?” Lux narrows his eyes at him.

 

“His last life was the forever beautiful, _Narcissus_ , son of a river god and a sea nymph who hated everyone except for his own self, in love with his reflection to the point of _exhaustion_. Very much exactly what he is to this very day. Lucky for him, the cursed beauty of a Narcissus will follow him forever. Now I get 3 in a row.”

 

Liam glares at him.

 

“Zayn isn't a narcissist.”

 

Lux laughs like Liam just said a joke.

 

“I said _Narcissus_.”

 

“I know what a _narcissist_ is and that's not Zayn.”

 

“ _You’re not listening to me_ ,” Lux says slowly.

 

“ _NarcisSUS. Nars._ Not _Narst_. Ending with an _S_ instead of _T_.” he enunciates clearly so Liam will understand that he's not pronouncing narcissist wrong with his weird accent that slips in and out.

 

“Humans are so fucking _stupid_ , changing things they don't understand into something else and not even bothering to know their true meanings. It's the same bloody thing.” he scoffs. Liam rolls his eyes as he goes back to the human bashing.

 

Liam's actually knows who he’s talking about now as he realises where he’s heard that name before. The narcissus marsh. The strange body of water is named after the myth of the beautiful boy who fell in love with his reflection and drowned in it after falling into the water. Daffodils grew where he died and they’ve called the flowers narcissus ever since. No one knows where the water came from or where it leads so it makes the story even more ominous. But even if that is supposed to be his past life, Zayn's not in love with his reflection. In fact, he hates it.

 

“You must have the wrong person. Zayn isn’t like that.”

 

“I vividly recall him saying he fell in love with you because of his reflection in your eyes. He hasn't changed at all. He looks at himself instead of looking at you. Sounds like Nars to me.”

 

Goosebumps spread across Liam's skin creepily as his brows furrow.

 

_Nars?_

 

“What did you just say?” Liam says slowly.

 

“I'll tell you what. You go and read a book or even use that handy _google_ and read about what narcissism actually is and all your answers regarding Zayn's past will be answered.”

 

Liam already knows about the story of Narcissus that birthed narcissism to the world.

 

“Before that.”

 

 _“It's my turn to ask.”_ Lux parrots Liam words back at him, using his made up rules against him dancing around direct answers with weird riddles now.

 

Liam remembers everything about what Lux told him about the human he came out of yesterday. If he’s trying to say what Liam _thinks_ he’s saying then there’s no way he’s dancing around a direct answer.

 

Lux stares at him closely for a moment, like he's contemplating something. Trying to come up with a question Liam can't dodge himself. It feels like they really are playing a game right now. He finally asks.

 

“Are you in love with Zayn?”

 

Liam nearly chokes on air, coughing out abruptly into his arm, not expecting him to say that at all.

 

“W-what?”

 

Lux leans in closer, enunciating slowly like how Zayn does when he's being sarcastic.

 

_“Are you… in love… with Zayn?”_

 

Okay. No way to avoid that one. Liam takes a moment to finish coughing up whatever just got lodged in his throat.

 

“Of course I love Zayn. He's my best friend.” He finally says with burning cheeks.

 

“That's not really what I asked you but whatever.” he says, smirking in amusement.

 

He’s right. There was a difference between saying you love someone and being _in love_ with someone. Love was just a word.

 

“I’m only asking because when you fucked me-”

 

Liam’s gut heats up again. Lux pauses, smiling at Liam’s expression.

 

“ _Yes, you fucked me_.” He repeats for emphasis, nodding slowly before continuing.

 

“You weren't really fucking me. It was more like making-”

 

“Okay, so what? You tricked me into fucking you, I get it. I was fucking there!” Liam cuts him off.

 

There was no way in hell Liam was talking about that with him or _anyone_ for that matter.

 

Lux shrugs, leaning back.

 

“I can't make you do anything you don't wanna do already babe.”

 

Liam narrows his eyes again. He obviously likes making Liam uncomfortable on purpose. Maybe he should play his game too.

 

“How old are you?”

 

Lux sucks in his lip as he tenses, squinting his eyes as he cracks his neck briefly, then smiles.

 

“Wait it's still my turn isn't it?”

 

“ _Nooo_ ,” Liam laughs.

 

“I asked you a question and you have to answer. I answer all of your questions.”

 

“No, you don't you fucking liar. You barely even give me a chance to ask you anything at all.”

 

“Why don't you want to say how old you are?” Liam smiles, growing very genuinely curious about his age the more he refuses.

 

“Why do you want to know so badly?” he counters.

 

“Because it clearly scares you. Are you afraid I’ll think you’re a geezer?”

 

Lux's eyes darken, the pale grey dimming a bit then as he sits up slowly. Liam gulps at his suddenly serious expression.

 

_“I’m not afraid of **anything**.”_

 

“Then hint us your age. I really want to know how old you are.” Liam insists. He's figuring out how to get right under his skin.

 

Right after saying he’s not afraid, his heart jumped. Which means he's lying. He really _is_ afraid of his age. Liam thinks that's a good thing. He's afraid of something. Like Zayn said, it's okay to have fear. Fear is what makes people… _human_. But this is a demon. Liam can't forget that this is a  _demon._ Not Zayn.

 

 _“I don't age._ Your soul determines your age. Your body determines how _old_ you are. And yes, there is a difference. I don’t have either so that question is incontestable and pointless. Demons don't have to count how long we've existed so I couldn't tell you even if I _wanted_ to. You want a hint? I've been having sex since God itself was a child. That's how “old” I am.”

 

Liam purses his lips. That sounds pretty _old_. But Lux didn't really seem old. He talks like he's always joking most of the time. And there was something bright and mischievous about his eyes. Almost childlike even though the colour has obviously faded into a pale grey from probably lifetimes upon lifetimes of use.

 

“What's your full name?” Liam asks. Lux throws his hands up a little, shaking his head at Liam.

 

“Do I not get a turn or is another one of your “rules” that you get to ask me anything as many times as you want?”

 

Liam rolls his eyes.

 

“ _Fine_. You ask.”

 

Lux mimics Liam and rolls his grey eyes right back.

 

“What's your favourite colour?”

 

Liam laughs a little with his brows knitting together. He was asking him such silly questions. Especially after making it seem like he wanted to interrogate him about Zayn. He hasn't asked him a single thing about what Zayn did yesterday come to think of it.

 

He obviously knows what Liam's favourite colour is since he has all of Zayn’s memories.

 

Liam looks past him briefly, at the pink rose bush right behind his head, smiling a little to himself.

 

He focuses intently for a moment on a particular flower, willing it to be bound to Liam's mind instead of to the bush. He manages to make it pluck itself right out of the pack after not too long, floating in the air behind Lux’s head before coming around into the space between them. They both watch it levitate in the air.

 

“This is my favourite colour.”

 

“Your favourite colour is a rose?”

 

Liam laughs, shaking his head as Lux smiles.

 

“Liam babe, I don't think you understand the question.”

 

Liam shakes his head again. Lux already knows this story about Louis pushing him into a bed of roses because he brought it up the first day they spoke to each other to avoid talking about when he came to Liam's house after the fire. But Zayn doesn't know the significance of Liam's favourite colour. Not _yet_.

 

“I didn't know what my favourite colour was until I was 13.” He says as the flower starts to twirl around in a little circle, rotating around the small space between them like a planet in orbit. It was surprisingly easy to control. Lux looks back up at Liam, watching him as he talks while he focuses on making the rose float between them.

 

“That's the thing everyone always asks, right? _What's your favourite colour??”_ Liam glances at him briefly, meeting his gaze before looking back at the rose, making it rotate the other way.

 

“For years I'd always say I didn't have one. But one day, I finally did.”

 

“At lunch, me and Louis were fighting over who got to sit next to Zayn at our table. They always had a thing for each other but, it wasn't official for a while. Sometimes…” Liam pauses, frowning a little.

 

“Sometimes I think _I'm_ the reason it took so long for them to really get together. Deep down, I know that's why Louis hated me so much most of our lives because he knew he'd never have what me and Zayn did.” Liam's cheeks heat up again after admitting that, knowing that Zayn can hear everything he's saying. He continues anyways.

 

“Louis wanted to take my spot next to Zayn and I didn't want to move because there was a perfectly empty seat across from us to use. So he pushed me out of it,”

 

Liam gestures to the bushes around them.

 

“I fell right into a thorny rose bush like these.”

 

“What a _heathen_ ,” Lux frowns “I don't understand how he could be involved with such a twat.”

 

Liam laughs at that.

 

“Right? Me neither…” then he tilts his head a little, looking him up and down carefully.

 

“Did we just… _agree_ on something?”

 

Lux nods slowly.

 

“I think so. Is that wrong?”

 

“No, it’s just…” Liam pauses “Are you sure you’re a demon?”

 

Lux rolls his eyes as he laughs.

 

“Yes, I'm _pretty sure_. And so are you. We're not totally evil like Zayn thinks y’know.”

 

“Yeah…” Liam says slowly, narrowing his eyes a little.

 

Lux keeps his eyes on Liam too, smiling at his suspicion expression, quirking his eyebrows slightly to make another silly face. Liam looks away then, back to concentrating on the rose.

 

Looking Lux in the eye was starting to freak him out. Just like when he looks himself in the eye for too long.

 

Anyone could stare at themselves in a mirror long enough and start to look like a totally unrecognisable person. Your own reflection will eventually start to look like someone else staring back at you. Liam’s done that so often he got too scared to even look at his reflection anymore.

 

When he stares at Lux for too long now, he starts to look unrecognisable like he doesn't know who was staring back at him. And they've been staring at each other unblinkingly for the last almost hour.

 

It wasn't quite Zayn, but it also wasn't some scary demon he's previously hated. He doesn't know _who_ he's looking at. And then there was the fact that he could actually _see_ his eyes… and they haven't left Liam too much at all. Not even to blink. It was just psyching him out. He continued with his story with his gaze fixed on the rose instead of Lux. The wind picks up, almost taking the flower with it but he's able to keep it steady.

 

“Anyways, I had to get a tetanus shot from the nurse. But I was being such a cry baby about it, Zayn even came in with me but I still wouldn't let her go near me with that needle without wailing like a child. So, he distracted me while the nurse stuck it into my arm,” Liam snorts briefly as he thinks back to that day.

 

He was such a mess. He would've rather let the puncture wounds infect him than get a damn shot. But, they weren’t gonna let him leave without it so he cried.

 

“Don’t think about it.” Zayn tried to assure him, letting Liam squeeze the life out of his wrist. He thought the tattoo was gonna rub off on his skin from how hard he was gripping it.

 

“What am I supposed to think about?” Liam sniffed as he sat on the table, only able to think about the giant needle that was gonna be stabbing him in a few minutes.

 

“Think about me.” Zayn cheesed but Liam angrily wiped his teary eyes under his glasses.

 

“This isn't funny!”

 

“I'm not laughing!” Zayn laughed anyways.

 

Liam squeezed his eyes shut then, thinking about everything he wasn't supposed to be thinking about. How much he hated Louis. How much he hated stupid, thorny roses. And especially how much he hated shots. The nurse came back shortly after, but he kept his eyes closed, squeezing Zayn's wrist even harder, breathing out rigidly.

 

“You’re overthinking it,” Zayn whispered. All Liam could do was over think. About how this was the end. He was gonna die.

 

When the cold tissues wiped over his arm, he tensed all the way up.

 

“What's your favourite colour?” Zayn whispered again. Liam bit down on his lip hard, shaking his head.

 

“I dunno.”

 

“Come on, you know…” Zayn coaxed.

 

“Yellow!” he blurted when the nurse’s gloved fingers touched him.

 

“Not _my_ favourite colour. _Yours_.”

 

“Green.” Liam bit down on his trembling lip, just saying random colours now.

 

“You can be more creative than that.” Zayn tutted, unimpressed.

 

“Blue… red…”

 

“That's bollocks.”

 

“What is?”

 

Liam peaked at Zayn with one eye, the other still squeezed shut.

 

 _“My favourite colours blue.... My favourite colours red_ …” He cooed in a mocking tone

 

“I haven't got a favourite colour Zayn!” Liam hissed angrily.

 

“It's pink,” Zayn informed him. Liam's brows scrunched up.

 

 _“What?”_ It was so random. This entire conversation was random.

 

“Don’t _“what”_ me. Your favourite colours pink.”

 

Liam just nodded and told Zayn he was right. He knew what he was doing. Trying to make him think about something else.

 

“Okay. My favourite colours pink,” he repeated.

 

“Hey,” Zayn whispered, “Look at me.”

 

Liam opened his teary eyes to find Zayn 2 inches away from his face, big brown dewy eyes full of light as he smiled with his rosy cheeks. It made Liam feel calm in that moment, forgetting where he even was. Zayn looked down at his lips then, and Liam almost thought he was gonna kiss him. He wanted him to.

 

He'd never been kissed before. He'd never wanted to be kissed before. He never realises how badly he wanted Zayn to kiss him until that very moment, sat on a slab of metal in the nurse's office.

 

Zayn lightly touched the underline of Liam's jaw and hesitated when he leant closer. Then he pecked the side of his cheek, right near his mouth instead, erupting soft heat there and flutters in his gut, like little butterflies wings. His other hand pressed into a spot on Liam’s arm until he pulled away.

 

Liam blinked with wide eyes, looking at the blush deepening on Zayn’s cheeks, knowing his were doing the same thing. It wasn't a real kiss. But it almost was. He nodded down at Liam’s arm, then so he looked at where Zayn touched him there, covered with a bandaid already.

 

He felt like he was in a dream as he got off the table. It wasn't the first time he could remember feeling totally detached from reality to the point of not feeling his body. But it was the first time he liked it cause he didn't even feel the needle. But he felt Zayn.

 

“What just happened?”

 

“You just got a shot!” Zayn smiled as he got some candy even though he wasn't the one that got the shot.

 

“That's it?”

 

_“That's it.”_

 

When they left, Liam thought he would’ve felt like he’d emerged from war but… he felt kind of weightless. And happy. Like he was floating. Something did happen and it was so innocent but so much more than realising what his favourite colour was or just getting a shot. He realised something much bigger than his favourite colour.

 

Whenever anyone asked him what it was then, he just automatically said pink. The colour brought back everything in that instant. Blushing and thorny roses and lips and the eruption of butterflies in his gut and Zayn. He secretly considered that his first kiss although if anyone asked, he’d say it was Cher the next year during a game of spin the bottle.

 

“I didn’t know I had a favourite colour until he told me it was pink. I just remember wanting him to kiss me. And then… he did. I haven't seen pink the same ever since.”

 

Lux’s eyes flutter a few times, like a dazed Bambi. It’s the first time he's blinked since coming out here. Liam almost thinks it's Zayn for a split second. Almost. But his eyes are still grey under the brown.

 

“Why’d he say your favourite colour was pink?” he asks. The question was almost synonymous with asking why Zayn almost kissed him in the first place.

 

The flower twirling in between them drops into his lap after Liam lets the wind take it wherever, picking up a few more loose flower petals from the bushes and sweeping them around through the air. Lux finally looks away from Liam for a moment to pick it up.

 

“A distraction.” Liam smiles a little as he looks at Lux. He’s suddenly blinking now, looking down at the pink rose in his lap. He brings it up to his nose as he closes his eyes and inhales deeply. The other flower behind his ear was hanging off the edge to the brink of falling out now that the wind was blowing harder, his burnt out cigarette keeping its place.

 

Liam doesn't know what compels him to reach out and fix it but, he does. Without thinking, he carefully tilts Lux’s rose in his ear up so it's not crooked and almost falling off anymore. His fingers graze against the tip of his ear for a beat too long when he gets distracted from staring at him, watching rose petals fly by in the breeze around him.

 

He can't help staring. He's an incubus _and_ he's Zayn. That was a devastating combination. Liam couldn't even fathom what he must really look like. He said he probably looked like Nars which Liam thinks might be short for _Narcissus_ now.

 

Lux looks back up and jerks away from Liam immediately, just a natural reaction after being startled when he's touched unexpectedly, making the flower fall before Liam can finish that thought. Lux catches it before it can hit the ground. Although he moves so fast, it all happens in half a millisecond but for Liam, it's as if it happens in slow motion.

 

“Sorry,” Liam squeaks quickly, dropping his hand away, starting to blush against his will.

 

“Dunno why I… did that…”

 

“You’re alright.” he laughs lightly, twirling the rose around in his hand. There’s a pregnant pause that Liam should find awkward but he can't because he's too busy having another unblinking staring match.

 

Skin contact with Zayn was intense as it is. But eye contact with Lux was in a whole other realm of it's own.

 

Looking into his eyes feels like he has flashbacks from things that have never happened. Looking at someone who _looks_ like Zayn, but he's _not_ Zayn. His slow heartbeat echoes in front of him gently, a beat reminiscent of a melody Liam thinks he’s heard before that he wouldn't mind swaying leisurely to.

 

Lux’s eyes flit down Liam's face then, going from his eyes to his lips. He’s so close. Liam almost thinks they're about to…

 

Liam stops himself, only just realising that _he's_ the one that's gradually leaning closer and Lux is the one leaning back away from Liam at the same time. His brows shoot up when Liam stops, quirking them slightly as he looks him up and down before a lazy smirk perches at his lips.

 

Liam tears his eyes away, wishing he was half blind again. He just can't look at him anymore after connecting some weird dots. Or sit this close to him, crowding in each other's personal space. Or talk to him about Zayn. Or reveal things he's hardly even revealed to his own self. He can't handle the intimacy of it.

 

He stands up abruptly to stop himself from leaning any closer, blowing air out of his mouth briskly before he does something really stupid. Something Zayn said he'd kill him for.

 

“Wow.” He laughs awkwardly, rubbing his nose as he looks off in the distance at nothing in particular. The air was suddenly too thick. Clouding up the tight space of his mind. He wanted to get out… but he didn't want to go anywhere at the same time.

 

“I’ve never… _told_ anyone that before.” He murmurs that more to himself than anything else. He's never even said that out loud. It was strange how easy it was to talk to him. Almost like talking to Zayn even. Even more strange that he actually… wasn't as bad as Liam originally thought he was?

 

“Why were you such an ass to me when you first got here?”

 

“Wasn't in love with you then.”

 

“What!?” Liam instantly turns back around with wide eyes.

 

“I said,” he blinks again, down into his lap.

 

“Why'd you never tell him that then? That you wanted him to kiss you.”

 

Okay, Liam's hearing is on superman’s level right now so he knows for a fact he didn't hear that wrong. And he's also aware that it's not the first time Lux has said something like that to him. But he answers anyways, cautiously.

 

“He never asked…”

 

_“I just did you prick.”_

 

Liam freezes totally then, gaping at him as he tries, and fails, to bite back a wide grin.

 

 _“ZAYN!”_ he's instantly back over to him and pulling him to his feet as he engulfs him into a hug.

 

Their faces both squish up against each other. It feels like he hadn't seen him in years. It’s overwhelming Liam's senses, like always. Smell, touch… it honestly wasn't a huge change, which makes him pull away suddenly to punch him in the arm after he realises something.

 

“OW!”

 

“ _Asshole!_ How long have I been talking to you?!?”

 

Zayn shrugs with an impish smirk, hitting him back harder.

 

“You’re always talking to me you disobedient _fuck_. I should break your ass in half right now.”

 

Okay that was technically true but it was usually obvious who was talking back to him. It didn't even look like Zayn after a while of staring at him. Like… he was just looking at _Lux_. Staring into a reflection for too long.

 

Liam can't dwell on it right now because now it really is Zayn and nothing else matters.

 

"What a  _prick."_ Zayn pokes his stomach.

 

“Stop _calling_ me that!” Liam laughs, tugging Zayn's arm into him and slinging the other over Zayn's neck, putting him in a headlock as he started to mess up his short hair.

 

“Ouch!” Zayn yelps in pain, making Liam let go immediately. Before he can ask if he hurt him, Zayn pushes Liam down to the ground and jumps on his back so they’re actually fighting. Fighting him was always harder than fighting Harry cause Zayn always played dirty.

 

 _“Don't tell me what to do.”_ he grumbled, struggling to pin Liam’s arms behind his back like he's arresting him but, Liam is way stronger than Zayn now.

 

He easily turns around so Zayn is straddling him for a moment then sits up and pins Zayn on his back, careful not to manhandle him too hard this time since his neck seems to be sensitive.

 

“ _I_ am going to kick your ass actually,” his cheeks could just burst from how much he's unable to stop smiling. Once he finally wrestles his arms down, Zayn's knee actually does kick Liam's ass, hard enough to shove him forward, off Zayn, who's on his feet in seconds and sprinting away.

 

“Not if you can't catch it!” He cries. Liam is right behind him.

 

[Brown eyes - Madvillain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbGLhsf1iLQ)

 

He chases Zayn all over campus, and eventually down the street until he's not even chasing him anymore. They're just running together now and their laughter is getting picked up into the wind with their feet, racing each other and Liam doesn't feel like he's dreaming anymore. This is _real_.

 

They're running faster than humanly possible, not even caring who sees. Although they're going too fast for it to be possible for anyone to see who they are. So fast, they're practically flying and Liam's never felt so alive in his body. _Really_ in his body and not floating away from it. All their lives they wanted to have superpowers and now they both did.

 

No matter how far they go, Liam never runs out of energy. Zayn does though. He's wheezing by the time they get to the top of the longest hill in town.

 

On this hill, you could see over everything. All the neighbourhoods, all the thousands of the many trees that gave Manningtree its name… just everything.

 

Liam lets Zayn win. He runs up the hill with his hands dragging across the tall grass and wildflowers out in front of him until he reaches the top, running right into the ground and collapsing. He rolls over on his back with his hand on his chest as it rises and falls. Liam stands over him, hands on his hips, not even having broken a sweat.

 

“When did you become such a wimp?” He teases him.

 

“Since my hellfire lungs don't agree with this fresh air you _earthlings_ breathe,”

 

Liam looks around them, at all the empty, free space they have.

 

“Well you are the fresh air this earthling breathes so…”

 

Zayn laughs, standing back up and grabbing Liam’s hands before he begins to swing them around fast.

 

“Let’s see who’s the real _wimp_.”

 

This was a dangerous game Zayn, Liam and Harry used to play at the top of this very hill when they were kids.

 

On top of fighting and roughhousing like most boys did as children, these three always took things one step over the edge.

 

They’d swing each other around until one of them got too dizzy or nauseous to hold on, risking one or two of them getting sick and being thrown down the hill if they let go. They called it “extreme-ring-around-the-rosie”. Liam or Harry usually lost. Their mums made them stop playing it when Harry broke his arm tumbling down the hill when they were 11.

 

Right now, Liam and Zayn had more strength than either of them knew what to do with. They whip each other around with the force of a tornado, laughing more the faster they go until everything is just a blur of motion except for the person across from them.

 

Liam can feel Zayn’s hands slipping as he gets more and more tired. But Liam’s not tired at all.

 

 _“Let me win!”_ Zayn wheezes in laughter and fatigue. Liam always used to let Zayn win. Not this time.

 

Liam shakes his head, grinning evilly. Zayn’s about to let go.

 

 _“‘M not gonna catch you,”_ Liam warns him.

 

Zayn closes his eyes and let's go anyway, making Liam practically throw him. Liam’s eyes bulge. He wasn’t expecting him to give up so easily.

 

Instead of falling down the hill, Zayn floats on his back like there's no gravity and hooks his foot behind Liam's leg, pulling him forward into him. Liam yelps as their chests bump, both of them falling back to the ground together, gently as Zayn floats to the ground on the side of the hill so they’re at the very edge, able to see their entire town.

 

“ _Cheater_ … ” Liam smiles as he throws a purple flower head at him. Zayn snickers, letting go of him so Liam can roll on his back and contently folds his arms behind his head as he sighs at the sky. Zayn lies his head in his arm then, staring up at the sky from the top of the world as well.

 

Maybe they shouldn't be so relaxed right now. Maybe they should be taking advantage of this time to get some questions answered and issues solved but neither of them makes one move to do any of that.

 

After everything, _every fucking thing_ that's happened in the last several weeks, this moment of contentment is like the pause in time Liam needed. There's no funeral surrounding them or lightning shocking the air. No imminent portals sucking anyone away, no demons interrupting. Just each other laying quietly like always and a hill that touches the sky and Liam feels calm again.

 

“Take a picture of that for me?” Zayn says, pointing at the sky. He was one of those people that took pictures of clouds.

 

Liam takes out his phone to open the camera, his arm caging Zayn into him, fumbling for a moment when Zayn sticks his nose against Liam as he takes some with Zayn laying on his arm still. Then scrolls through it.

 

“Send that one to me too.” Zayn taps the screen.

 

“That's _me_.” Liam laughs. He didn't take selfies ever but he snapped it when the camera opened by mistake when he was laughing too much to keep it steady.

 

“It’s cute! Send it to me.” Zayn nudges his nose against Liam’s cheek again.

 

“No… it's ugly.”

 

The tip of Zayn's nose is touching his grinning cheek in it so maybe it's not _too_ bad.

 

Zayn rolls his eyes but smiles when Liam sends it with the rest anyways. They relax again.

 

“So.” Zayn chirps.

 

“So…”

 

“So I think it's my turn now.” Zayn turns over on Liam's arm like it’s pillow. Liam looks down at him, waiting for him to continue.

 

“Ok.” he nods

 

“Ok.” Zayn repeats. Liam's eyes dart to the side awkwardly when Zayn doesn't say anything.

 

“Um… okay…”

 

“Okay!” Zayn nearly yells. Liam laughs.

 

“OKAY!”

 

Zayn hits him in his chest when he screams it.

 

“Shut up!” he laughs, then sits up suddenly, looking around them.

 

“Um… hold on, ‘m gonna write it down and you answer, yeah? I have to get your shit.”

 

Liam laughs as he nods. Zayn gets up and takes off then, disappearing back down the hill like Sonic the hedgehog.

 

Liam briefly wonders why he's stronger and faster than Zayn when he's not even a full demon like him. He counts to 2 minutes until Zayn's back with Liam's school bag, dropping it on the ground behind him and laying back down on Liam's arm, putting a folded piece of paper on his chest.

 

Liam shakes his head as he opens it. His cheeks really hurt from how much he's been smiling.

 

Inside the paper reads etched across in Zayn's handwriting:

 

 _I’m gonna try this again now that Niall's out of the hospital this time… would you go out with me tonight? (just me I promise)_  
_Yes :)_ [ ]  
_No (choose this and die)_ [ ]  
_Maybe (means yes)_ [ ]

 

His head falls back as he starts laughing after he reads it. Zayn covers his face with both his hands.

 

Liam almost forgot about Zayn's failed attempt at asking him out a few weeks ago.

 

“When did you suddenly become this awkwardly shy person? Is this really Zayn right now?” Liam pulls Zayn's hands away from his face. He's sort of not even joking when he asks this. Zayn keeps his eyes squeezed shut, covering them with his arm.

 

“Since Zayn went to a party with you and finally got to kiss you and you actually kissed me-- I mean… _him_... back and then stomped on his heart,” he says into the crook of his arm.

  
Liam's mouth pops open, pulling Zayn's arm away from his face. He was so warm to the touch, his head was sending tingles out all over Liam's skin.

 

“... what?”

 

Zayn sighs, opening his eyes finally.

 

“That's why I was mad at you, okay? I… _kissed_ you… and I was so nervous about it but, I just said, ‘ _fuck it_ ’, you know? Figured the worst that could happen was you'd just push me away and I blame being too high and we'd all have a laugh at the expense of my heart-break but… you didn't. You fucking kissed me back and it was unexpected and amazing and _warm_ and I just wondered why the fuck my dumbass waited so long to do that after wasting my entire fucking life kissing anyone else when I should've been kissing _you_ and yeah. But, then… you left and I felt like a jackass because I thought it was probably just a dumb game to you and I was the only one who felt all that crap so my heart got to break _anyways_ but I know I acted really immature about it, and I'm sorry for being such a colossal ass crack afterwards but then I threw myself at Eggsy and I got fucked up and let a trio of devil worshippers take me away and sacrifice me and turn me into a sexy demon and now people are dead and everything is majorly fucked and yeah.” He spills out all his guts in one breath, leaving Liam speechless.

 

After a beat of silence and Zayn nervously chewing through his bottom lip, he pokes Liam in his stomach, making him jerk to the side.

 

“Okay, it's your turn to ask something and stop staring at me like I’ve got tits on my face please.”

 

“Zayn…” he slowly shakes his head, one hand holding his abdomen, bustling with butterflies but also aching from the burning in his chest.

 

“I… _broke your heart?”_ His voice goes two octaves too high.

 

Zayn rolls his eyes, shaking his head dismissively as he plays with Liam's shirt collar distractingly.

 

“It was whatever… just a dumb game, it honestly didn't matter. You apologised and said you loved me so it was all forgotten and I'm over it so let's move on to something relevant.”

 

Liam can't even process what he's hearing because all he can think about now is that he fucking _broke Zayn's heart._

 

“Why didn't you… _say_ anything? I asked you 80 thousand times why you were mad at me! You let me walk around not knowing that? What in the actual fu--”

 

“It was so _embarrassing_ I didn't want you to know. I just wanted it to be over. I wished it never happened.”

 

“Why would you be embarrassed?” Liam frowns.

 

“Cause I kissed you and you _left_   _me_ immediately after.” Zayn looks back up towards the sky as he frowns.

 

“God the whole night was such a fucking _nightmare_. I had this retarded plan that I massively fucked up by getting too high beforehand because I was nervous as shit about it. Then you seemed so utterly disgusted with what happened anyways, I couldn't even bring myself to go through with it anymore. It went _beyond_ a slightly bruised ego.”

 

Liam frowns even more. He thought Zayn was so angry at him cause he's a moody asshole but he was fucking _heartbroken_.

 

He looks at Liam again.

 

“I’ve always thought I was that dumb cliche as it is. The gay one falling for his straight best friend… ‘cept I didn't even know if it was the _right_ cliche cause you’re a confusing little shit.” he squeezes Liam's side ticklishly, making him writhe as he laughs.

 

“Always being so goddamn _vague_ about everything…” he grumbles, going into full-on attack mode across Liam's belly until Liam can't take it anymore. He relents when Liam shouts that he's gonna wee himself, laying his head back down on Liam's arm again as he sighs.

 

“I’d always wondered about what you were into cause you never like to talk about that kind of stuff or show interest in _anyone_ no matter how much I tell you no one will judge you. I thought you were just too embarrassed to say you were asexual for _years_ until out of nowhere you decide to start eating snatch. You fucking pistol whipped me.”

 

Liam laughs loudly, scrunching up his brows although he does understand why he got that impression.

 

“Um… okay I'm definitely _not_ asexual.”

 

 _“Obviously I know that now._ I thought all this demon shit made you realise you wanted me because you were being seduced every day until literally _an hour ago_. You never told me pink gave you a boner because of me or that you wanted me to fuck you on the table when you got your tetanus shot or anything you willingly told my fucking _demon_.”

 

Liam squeezes his eyes shut briefly, trying to process the influx of information but laughing at how Zayn paraphrases his words.

 

“I didn't say _that_ Jesus! I need to stick a bar of soap for your mouth.”

 

“That’s what I fucking mean. That’s some kinky shit right there and you let me think you were sex repulsed.” Zayn hits Liam lightly in his chest again.

 

“Why’d you never tell me? Why’d you fucking leave me after making out with me? Why are you such a _prick?”_ Zayn laughs a little.

 

“This is what I mean about you being a confusing shit. You don't make any fucking sense.” he scowls at Liam who has had enough of being roasted without defending himself.

 

“I _left_ because you always _do_ that to me Zayn. Maybe you don't always stick your tongue in my mouth but you always drive me crazy the same way and I didn't know how to react! I was pissed off because I thought you were trying to get me _dumped_ on purpose cause you’re an asshole and that's something you'd fucking do just for a laugh!”

 

“Liam James Payne, when have I EVER genuinely laughed at you-” Liam covers his mouth as he continues, laying on top of Zayn's chest.

 

“I left because I didn't want to be dumped and left to feel like a forever alone twat while I’d have to live through you and _Louis_ again.”

 

Zayn takes his hand off and laughs loudly in confusion.

 

 _“Me and Louis?”_ he squints at Liam as if that's the most absurd thing he's ever heard which makes Liam laugh even harder because that's what he's talking about, Zayn purposefully making him feel crazy.

 

“Oh I'm sorry, I must be confusing the guy you dated for 3 years for the same guy you _intentionally_ made out with right in my face before making out with me. What kind of mixed signal bullshit is that?”

 

“Okay… first of all _mate_ ,” Zayn starts slow, and Liam knows by his tone that he's about to fucking shred him to dust.

 

“I didn't date _any_ fucking guy for 3 years so let's just abort that shit in it's womb before you even continue to make up your tired ass excuses. I _fucked_ him, sure. But so did 800 other people. Sometimes even at the same time.”

 

Liam sits up suddenly, squinting down at Zayn like he's trying to figure out if he's joking. Also, he does not want to hear about Zayn having threesomes or foursomes or _whatever_ -somes right now or _ever_.

 

“Second of all,” Zayn continues, leaning up a little on the back of his elbows.

 

“I only did that so the rotation would reverse. I'll admit that fucked logic made more sense in my baked brain than what it probably looked like in the moment now that I think about it. But I couldn't get you to drop the fucking card and kiss me on your own so excuse me for taking action since you seem to be the most oblivious boy in the world if you really never realised why I did that stuff.”

 

Liam stands up, covering his face as he starts laughing.

 

“Are you taking the _fucking_ piss out of me?” He says, incredulously.

 

“No… I'm not actually.” Zayn retorts, seriously. Liam squats over him.

 

“You’re gonna say _with a straight face_ that you and Louis never dated and that he never cheated on you and you didn't cry on Harry’s shoulder in year 9 when Louis took Eleanor Calder to the spring formal instead of you?”

 

Zayn’s head nods back on the ground.

 

“Uh… _yeah, mate_.” he snorts, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion.

 

“Sorry, I can't say anything with a _straight_ face when I'm thinking about dick 24/7.”

 

Liam lifts him up by his shoulders roughly, making him laugh even more when his arms dangle uselessly at his sides.

 

“ _Wow_ , you really wanna fight me on this babe? I like it _rough_.” His voice dips low, being all seductive as he grabs Liam by the collar of his shirt. His challenge isn't very founded, though. He can't stop smiling. Liam shakes his head at him, leaning in close so their foreheads touch.

 

“Don’t even play with me about this right now Z.” Liam grumbles as Zayn grins, leaning his head up like he's gonna kiss Liam. His lips graze against his, smiling against him until he pulls back at the last second before Liam can close the small gap.

 

His legs lift up in front of him and wrap around Liam’s waist, pulling him backwards with him until Zayn turns them around before they hit the ground, pinning Liam down on his back and straddling him.

 

Liam puffs out a winded laugh as he blinks up at Zayn leaning on top of him, blocking out the sun behind his head so it looks like he’s outlined in gold.

 

“Okay, I'm not gonna tell a complete lie. Maybe we _sort of_ dated off and on for a while but it wasn't as serious as you're making it sound.”

 

“How the hell do you "sort of" date someone?”

 

Zayn sits on Liam's stomach as his face drops.

 

“Liam I know you were technically blind before but I'm pretty sure you noticed that I hooked up with _many_ boys aside from Louis, as did he in the 3 years we started messing around. He never _cheated_ on me. People like us don't date. We hook up. _He_ told people we were dating, not _me_. Maybe Louis had a boyfriend for 3 years but I sure as hell didn’t. He already knew who I wanted to be with. If anything, we just had a few benefits in our friendship since the stupid prick I actually _wanted_ was pretending to be uninterested.”

 

Liam blinks once. It's like Zayn is pulling back the elaborate curtain and revealing his whole life is a lie.

 

“But… Harry said you were crying because he went out El.”

 

“I was _crying_ because I was drunk off my ass and hung up on that same _prick_ I liked having a date to that goddamn dance because he “platonically” went with Danielle Peazer instead of with me. Anything you and Haz thought to the contrary was completely by your own wild imaginations babe. Me and Lou are literally fuck buddies. There's nothing _serious_ about Louis Tomlinson.”

 

Liam shakes his head in disbelief. He almost forgot he had a date. Danielle ended up getting pissed and vomiting all over her dress so he left after a half hour in. He kind of feels weird talking about Louis right now, though, as if he's still here. Thinking about him and Zayn together made him want to throw up. Also the fact that he’s _dead_ might be a factor.

 

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about him…”

  
Zayn frowns.

 

“Why? I just saw him yesterday. I already apologised for everything ages ago.”

 

Liam gapes at him.

 

_“Louis went to hell?”_

 

Zayn laughs, shaking his head.

 

“No… well, sort of. There are technically 9 levels to hell. Lust is the second one. The least dangerous one luckily. We destroyed his body and ate his soul so he’s stuck in Lust right now. Literally.”

 

Liam squints. So… he’s referring to him in the present because he sees him practically every day. Which means…

 

“So… you're _still_ fuck buddies?”

 

Zayn quickly dismisses the entire topic.

 

“Don’t change the bloody subject! Now you were yelling at me for making out with him in your face but I was high and I've given you a valid reasoning for that so let's talk about you getting a _handjob_ at Niall’s party after abandoning me and looking me dead in the eyes as it was fucking happening. You get off on jizzing in my face?”

 

Liam pulls Zayn down by his arms so he's barely an inch away.

 

“I only got through that tragic moment because I was imagining it was you so yes, I _do_ get off on jizzing in your face. Pun intended,” he says low. Zayn's eyes flit between Liam's as he grins slyly.

 

“So Haz wasn't fucking with me when he told me my Lima Bean has wet dreams about me whenever his couch jerks him off?”

 

Liam finds himself going red as he gapes at him, pushing him off to he can cringe fully. He did not need that embarrassing moment to be confirmed to be 100% rightfully embarrassing. Zayn really heard _every word._

 

“Oh my God, I hate him so much…”

 

“Oh sod off, he loves us. He’s like our ride or die. He and Niall have been practically planning our _wedding_ together. Our alien godmother even wanted us to have safe sex, it was cute.”

 

Liam bursts out laughing, turning towards Zayn with his head against his shoulder.

 

“ _Please_ shut the fuck up, I don't wanna hear about that ever again.”

 

“I'm never letting you live down thinking I’m “non-virginal looking”. What the hell does that even mean?”

 

Liam covers his hand over Zayn's mouth as he laughs. Zayn pulls his hand away, holding it against his chest, waiting for him to answer.

 

“It means you _obviously_ don't look like a virgin. Like me.”

 

In all honesty, that was why he never told Zayn or anyone for that matter. Even without Zayn's “non-boyfriends”, Liam probably _never_ would've told him.

 

At that time of him suddenly wanting to lose his virginity a few weeks ago, he was just confused about what was going on with them. He never in a million years would've thought someone like Zayn would ever do anything like that with him. Then it turned out, it wasn't even really Zayn. Liam couldn't help thinking it wouldn't have happened if Zayn was in his right mind.

 

The whole time, he couldn't stop thinking about when Zayn asked if he looked like a virgin. Because Liam looked like a virgin and that was why he thought they weren't talking about it openly. He figured, maybe if he didn't “look like a virgin” Zayn would want him too. More than just for getting one off.

 

Zayn rolls his eyes.

 

“There’s no such thing as looking like a virgin Lima.”

 

Liam sits back on his back again, looking up at the sky.

 

“That's funny cause I'm not one anymore and now I look like… you.”

 

Zayn turns over on his side, frowning.

 

“Obviously you changing was _more_ than just from you losing your virginity. There was nothing wrong with the way you looked before. You literally look exactly the same. Just without glasses.” Zayn says seriously. Liam just nods, if only to change the subject and not talk about this any further cause he knows Zayn is only saying that to make him feel better.

 

They could talk about _anything_ right now except for the way he looked before he became a demon. There were 3 things Liam hated to talk or even think about that triggered his disassociating.

 

The first one was sex. Even when he masturbated, he always felt nothing so he refrained from doing even that as often as he could. It's not that it grossed him out or even because of his virtue. The way he liked to do it just felt too embarrassing.

 

The second thing was his appearance.

 

It was a huge insecurity he's had his whole life. Definitely, the main reason he never thought Zayn would ever be interested in him in that way. How could he have been attracted to Liam? Everyone knew he looked like a goddamn geezer. Like his father. He didn't want to be his father.

 

The thick glasses like him. His pudgy baby cheeks that he could never get rid of like him. Not even to mention his _body_. But now he had demon eyes and cheekbones and a firm gut and he had amazing hair and he didn't mind looking in the mirror anymore now that he saw a whole new person and he didn't want to think about virgin Liam ever again because, if he's being totally honest with himself, that was the only interesting thing about him before and it was ugly. Everyone treats him different now because he _looks_ different.

 

When he looked in the mirror before, all he saw his dad and that was the third thing he couldn’t even think about because that one was the whole reason for why he's so fucked up in the first place.

 

“Look there's a doughnut.” Liam points to a cloud. He's more trying to distract himself from his consuming thoughts than anything else. It still made his heart speed up as his brain threatens to cut off his manic thoughts suddenly. He wants to be up there with the clouds right now, away from his body. But Zayn’s right next to him so he doesn’t, suppressing the urge to leave his dumb body and disassociate. Zayn watches him for a moment before laying back again, watching the clouds roll by too, reflecting deeply.

 

There's a long pause before he says anything.

 

“You know, I’ve had this crippling crush on you for as long as I can remember and I never said anything because I was afraid it’d make you uncomfortable or scare you away if you ever knew.”

 

Liam starts smiling again, looking over at Zayn.

 

“So we were having each other for _breakfast_ every day and you were worried about making me uncomfortable?”

 

“ _Excuse me,_ ” He laughs, “That was raw, carnal, libidinous, concupiscent-”

 

 _“Libidinous concupiscent_ ,” Liam repeats mockingly as he laughs with his head nodding back. Zayn continues, wrapping his arm around his tummy.

 

“... moments of intensely deep feeling between two beings _incapable_ of expressing emotions through words.”

 

“Okay Mr English professor, use words I can understand. And this isn't Brokeback Mountain.”

 

“Hmm… gay cowboys? That's hot.” Zayn smiles. Liam laughs, shaking his head

 

Zayn continues, switching into a language Liam can follow.

 

“What I'm saying is that was pure sexual hunger cause we couldn't control ourselves around you and obviously by that point the big reveal that you like my dick was anti-climatic… the only anti-climatic thing about that week.”

 

Liam gets goosebumps every time Zayn refers to himself as more than one person, realising when he said two beings, he wasn't talking about Liam. He grins anyways, shaking his head.

 

“So _vulgar_ …”

 

“ _Always_.” He smiles softly, resting his chin on Liam’s chest

 

“And that was all before you lost your virginity bean… before any of this. I've always loved everything about you. Not the gross brother way. The I wanna be so close to you that I carry your smell and flavour wherever my soul is and you also carry mine-”

 

“Are those the lyrics to Inferno?” Liam laughs and Zayn laughs as well cause Liam caught it before he even got a full lyric out.

 

Despite the fact that it’s a High Tide song, the dark pit in Liam's stomach shrinks into the size of a grape as his fluttering heart is engulfed in flames. He's so warm, it feels like his whole body is blushing. Zayn's getting pretty heated too.

 

“Okay, stop _looking_ at me like that.” he laughs. Liam brings his face back up, holding his heated cheeks.

 

“Like what?” he smiles, looking between both his eyes. Just brown eyes. Zayn won't look him in the eye.

 

“Like I'm _naked_.”

 

“Yeah… I've seen you naked plenty of times before we became demons and trust me, I wasn’t looking at your _face_.”

 

Zayn's face scrunched up, the bridge of his nose wrinkling at the corners as smiled into Liam's chest.

 

“Wow, how did I miss how _straight_ you are? You are so _straight_.”

 

Liam laughs, forcing Zayn to stop hiding his face.

 

He looks everywhere but into Liam's eyes. His nose. Eyebrows. The heart-shaped birthmark on his neck. Lips…

 

“Why do you turn away from me?” Liam brushes his short, dishevelled hair away from his face, tracing over his cheeks.

 

“You always shine so bright... I need sunglasses.”

 

Liam’s hand weaves into Zayn's, bringing his wrist up to his lips, kissing the sun there, smiling softly.

 

They could sit here, quietly, forever.

 

“I can't believe it.” it comes out in a faint laugh.

 

“Can't believe what?”

 

“All this time… you’ve wanted to-”

 

_“Kiss me.”_

 

Either one of them could’ve said either line.

 

Zayn always said he could kiss for hours and never get bored. He never thought he could do it with who he always wanted until now. After 17 human years of being in love with each other, and 1 hour of _relentlessly_ cursing each other out for it, they finally do.

 

Laying there in the grass at the edge of the earth, Liam peppers reverent, feathery kisses all over Zayn. Over his eyelids. His nose. His lips. His chin. His collar bone. His fingertips. The wrinkles around his eyes when he smiles. Anywhere visible.

 

Even as the sun starts to set and they realise time is getting away from them, they sit with each other and watch the sunset. Actually, they mostly watch the sunset glow off one another's skin, reflecting different shades of golds and pink.

 

“What’s your favourite colour again?” Zayn asks, tracing the shape of Liam's cupid’s bow.

 

_“You.”_

 

He could show him now, kissing him again, and Zayn just keeps kissing him back, all the way until the sun goes down and the moon reveals itself across the sky.

 

When they were kids and they'd watch the sun go down from this hill, Zayn used to tell Liam it was because the sun closed its eyes so the moon could come out. It was where the idea of getting tattoos came from years later.

 

With the sun's eyes closed, a whole new world emerged called the night. A world of dreams. When they both closed their eyes, another world emerged behind their eyelids. The world inside their souls. There, it’s quiet and they're calm. They're in their world together again. And they're happy.

 

  
*

 

  
Liam's mother was very happy to have Zayn back at her home after Zayn and Liam's 2 week long “fight” although she kept it to herself, smiling silently when they went up to Liam’s room with Zayn piggy back riding on Liam up the stairs cause he complained about being too tired to walk all that way back to Liam's house on his own.

 

The portal didn't open until tomorrow so, they had a lot of time to enjoy each other's company. They continued their game of 20 questions lying in Liam's bed with Zayn on one side and Liam on the other, their skinny legs tangling in the middle.

 

At this point, it was an infinite amount of questions. But they keep asking each other things anyways. 17 years is a long time to never realise such an obvious detail about each other. Now they just wanted to know everything.

 

“When Lux called me the night after the fire,” Liam starts as he's running his hands over Zayn's bare legs as he lays on his back. Zayn laughs.

 

“Yes. He was masturbating.”

 

Liam doesn't even have to ask the full question before Zayn answers. He squeezes his eyes closed as he snickered silently, thinking about how he almost persuaded him into coming over.

 

Zayn sits up and crawls over to Liam's side.

 

“I wanted to fucking _kill myself_. I was 100% sure you thought I was some kind of perverted freak.”

 

“Hey,” Liam looks at him.

 

“I already knew about you being a perverted freak.”

 

Zayn's mouth falls open, offended

 

“ _Fuck you_.” He hits Liam in the chest.

 

“I hope you had fun jerking off in your car.”

 

Liam stills, feeling the flush coming up his neck.

 

“How do you-”

 

“That’s what he _wanted_ you to do.” Zayn lays his head next to him on his pillow.

 

“And now I know you fell for it so who's the perverted freak now? Wanking in the middle of the street to the sound of my _voice_ in your ears.”

 

Liam’s face burns as he blushes. Zayn licks his lips, tiptoeing his fingers up Liam's stomach until they wrap around his neck as his voice dips low with his lips almost touching his ear.

 

_“Knowing what turns you on now is very interesting to play with. You like being choked… and touching yourself in your bed while rubbing your ass against my-”_

 

Liam covers Zayn’s mouth before he can finish that sentence. He has no idea how wound up Liam was. Or maybe he did. _Obviously_ , he did. Thinking about that now, another burning question occurs to Liam.

 

“What was happening to you that week?”

 

“What week?” Zayn kisses his palm as he pulls it off his mouth and holds his hand.

 

“When you were sick and stayed with me every night… Harry and I call it hell week.”

 

“Oh…”

 

Hell week was very appropriate. Zayn bites his lip now, contemplating if he should explain himself or not. Lux sort of already apologised, his way being to take Liam’s virginity but, Liam still wanted to know what was wrong. He looked like he was dying and it was terrifying.

 

“That was us getting… _hungry_. Hunger makes my body weak.”

 

“But… you were so _angry_. Like a totally different person. Literally Patrick Bateman.”

 

Zayn nods, sucking in a deep breath.

 

“I know. The closer we get to hunger, the closer we get to being the beast… it's very scary for all of us I guess. I express hunger in anger, he does it through sex. Lust is a very animalistic thing in it’s rawest form. We kind of combine in the worse possible way.”

 

Liam tilts his head to the side.

 

“The _beast?”_

 

Zayn nods.

 

“Okay, this will sound confusing but you have to bear with me, yeah?” he starts. Liam listens silently.

 

“So there’s like two mediums between me and Lux when we're not fighting to take turns being in control. We just get to close to each other in my body until we're overlapping. The first one is when we're both in control and the second one, _neither_ of us can control at all. It's the closest we come to being one whole being instead of two in one body. Random stuff that shocks me triggers the first one. Like when the lightning hit us. Or like earlier when you said you realised you wanted me to kiss you when you were 13. We're like… one person sometimes. Sometimes it's just random.”

 

Okay. That earlier was possibly the oddest thing Liam had ever experienced in his life. Looking at Zayn and seeing someone else. Behind his eyes now, there isn't anyone else and he doesn't get trippy flashbacks so at least he knows how to tell exactly who’s there. It still makes him wonder who it was that said certain things at certain moments since he obviously can’t tell them apart as well as he thought he could. Like what he _thought_ Lux said before he realised he was actually talking to Zayn a few hours ago. Zayn continues.

 

“That week I was fucking sick with hunger was the 2nd medium that comes out once hunger starts. It’s more like the hunger coming alive. It gets worse the longer we don't eat. Like the ultimate level of hangry if you just replaced angry with _homicidal_.”

 

Liam swallows. Louis learned that the hard way.

 

“He calls it the “beast”. I don't really know what it is, to be honest. He doesn't really explain this shit to me like he does with you. I just know that eventually, that's what takes over completely when we eat. It’s basically an animal. A _demonic_ , feral beast. The dark shit in my chest spreads all over us and it just takes over everything. It feels like it just explodes like a bomb in my body. It’s what turns us into a monster. Neither of us has control over it. I probably shouldn't have kept coming over in that state of being to be honest. It could've killed you.”

 

Liam nods, looking down a little. He thinks he's starting to get the hang of it now.

 

So, there was just Zayn like now. Normal, fully functional, amazing Zayn. Then there's Zayn and Lux, when they're both there at the same time, talking at the same time… which was seriously freaky.

 

Then there was just Lux. Now Lux was a… weird specimen. Liam didn't know what to make of him. What happened earlier with him was too much for Liam to even think about. He guesses he wasn't horrible now that he knows he's not actually a murderer… although he does wonder what happened that's made him feel comfortable talking to him after wanting nothing to do with Liam when he first got here.

 

But then at the very worse, there was that final form. When the worst of Lux and Zayn’s personalities mesh together and wreck havoc. The one Liam knows he's gonna see again soon and petrified for what was gonna happen after.

 

“So you would've probably done the same thing with anyone else closest to you…”

 

“Liam,” Zayn lifts his chin back up so Liam looks him in the eye.

 

“We would've _killed_ anyone else closest to us. But you're not just anyone else. No matter who I am, I always come back to you. I was scared I would at first but… I could never hurt you.”

 

Liam couldn't imagine what would've happened if Zayn wasn't with him. Well… he sort of could. He saw what the _beast_ looked like and what turned Zayn into. That part of him even turned on Liam.

 

“So you guys were trying to eat me?”

 

Zayn slowly leans into Liam's neck.

 

“Well, I _was_ eating you wasn't I?” he grazes his tongue over Liam's throat, making him shiver.

 

“You're quite lucky we didn't act on the urge to devour you. You taste like melted buttery goodness.”

 

Liam laughs.

 

“Are you saying I taste like popcorn? Because I thought you didn't like popcorn.”

 

“I hate popcorn but if it had your nut dripping off of it I'd eat that shit like it was my last meal.”

 

Liam's head falls back as he laughed, going _beet_ red.

 

_“Zayn! Oh my god,”_

 

“What? I thought we were being honest here?” he kisses the crook of Liam's neck, that spot that turns him into jello where his scar is, as his arms come up behind Liam's back.

 

“Do you know how _badly_ I've wanted to feel you in my throat?”

 

 _“Stop talking,”_ he holds Zayn's head into him, his hand in his short hair despite what he says.

 

Zayn must’ve figured out that this spot drives him crazy. His tummy has evolved from butterflies to the whooshing feeling it does when you're going down a hill on a rollercoaster. But not in an awful way. The exhilarating way.

 

“I know you got off on watching me lick your cum off my face… that's good because I really enjoy doing it.”

 

“You have such a dirty _mouth_ ,” he chuckles.

 

“You like my dirty mouth…. all over your _throat_ ,” he dragged his lips over the scar on Liam's neck where he bit him.

 

“On your _thighs_ ,” his hand comes up between Liam's legs, stopping just short of Liam's growing hard on.

 

“Around your….” he teases the area around his dick with his fingertips, purposefully winding Liam up.

 

Liam did _not_ sign up for all of this when he decided to tell Zayn he was his first kiss. Zayn was so uncharacteristically shy when it came to all the fluffy stuff and that was adorable but he's all confidence and tortuously sexy when he's in his element, making Liam squirm with his filthy mouth. But he's not the only one that can play dirty.

 

It triggers something in Liam that he's never felt before, going from wanting to squirm to wanting to make _Zayn_ squirm. And suddenly, it's like he knows exactly how.

 

He grasps Zayn's hand, bringing it back up away from his boner. Zayn smiles, biting his lip.

 

“So you're a little cum slut then huh?”

 

Zayn's smile falters as his mouth pops open. Zayn might be famous for his filthy tongue but Liam can be dirty too if he wanted. He wraps his hand around Zayn's wrist and pins it to his bed above his head as he climbs over him while he talks.

 

“Correction. You're a _dominate_ cum slut. Instead of you submitting to dick, you make it submit to you.”

 

Zayn stares up at him with wide eyes, mouth gaping at what he's hearing come out of Liam’s mouth right now.

 

“Submit to your _dirty mouth,_ when you neck me,” Liam leans down and massages his tongue over Zayn's _filthily_ , keeping his eyes open as he slowly licks around the inside of Zayn's mouth. He pins down Zayn's other hand as well when he tries to touch Liam, sucking on his tongue a little before pulling away again.

 

“ _Your pretty little ass_ ,” He continues, bringing his other hand under the back Zayn's (his) shirt, tracing down the centre of his spine capturing the gasp that escapes him in his mouth again.

 

“You even make me submit to the _curve of your spine_ when you're sitting on my face. We're gonna change that.”

 

Liam pauses as Zayn stares at him with stars in his eyes and a deep pink flush on his cheeks, distracted by something on Zayn's neck. It's the bruised skin again. It looks even bigger than before, reminding Liam that he wanted to ask what was wrong with Zayn's neck.

 

“What's going on with your neck?” he asks, looking closely. It looked like it was exactly the same, just under the skin with the bone underneath protruding out just a little. Zayn blinks.

 

 _"What?”_ He squeaks, still stunned.

 

“The back of your neck,” Liam carefully tilts Zayn's head to the side as he settles on top of him.

 

“It's discoloured like it was before. What happened?”

 

Zayn feels it absently as he laughs.

 

“You’ve just attacked me with vocabulary I've only ever heard a sex demon use while pressing into me with your erection and now you want to talk about what's on the back of my _neck?”_

 

Liam nods, looking seriously concerned.

 

“Harry hit me with his car 2 weeks ago and it kind of broke my neck and a bit of my upper back… probably revenge for threatening to kill him for being mean to you or something, I dunno…”

 

“WHAT?!?” Liam shrieks sitting up. He brings Zayn up too and turns his head around, pulling his shirt down his back so he can see it fully. Harry hadn't told him this. Lux’s vendetta against him made a lot more sense now. Zayn laughs at his alarm.

 

“I’m _kidding_ , it was an accident. We were in the middle of the street in the fog, he couldn't stop in time. It's just taking awhile to heal. It's okay.”

 

“Harry breaking your neck and back with his car is _not_ okay. He didn't even tell me!”

 

As far as Harry was concerned, he killed Zayn. He didn’t know he was a demon two weeks ago. Liam was gonna kill him. Figuratively that is.

 

“ _Babe_ ,” Zayn turns back around and pulls Liam's hands off his neck. “I don't even know if he knew it was me. I didn't exactly look human. I'm a demon now? It's gonna take a lot more than Hazza's Acura to kill me. And Lux already threatened to eat his soul so you don't have to go all hulk smash mode, yeah? Now can talk to me like that again and finish what you were telling me about me giving you _neck_ and the curve of my _spine?”_

 

Liam's hands slide down Zayn's waist and take off his shirt so he can turn him around.

 

“Does it hurt?” He carefully pushes Zayn on his belly. It was all over his neck and back. It looked horribly painful. It hasn't healed at all. He can't even see his fantail tattoo.

 

“A bit.” Zayn sighs “What are you doing?” he cranes his neck to look over his shoulder but Liam makes him turn back around.

 

“I'm examining the curve of your spine. Just relax.” Liam smiles, straddling the back of Zayn's legs. Zayn watches him in the mirror as Liam takes off his own shirt, leering approvingly as leans over him.

 

“ _Okay_ … do please continue Mr Chiropractor.” he rests his chin in his arms, biting on his hand as he watches Liam run his hands up the centre of his back, feeling his chest lay on top of him.

 

Liam kisses the space between his shoulder blades.

 

“That's some great examining you're doing there, doc.”

 

Liam makes eye contact in the mirror.

 

“Wait, don't move.” he hops off Zayn for a moment and disappears into his bathroom. Zayn listens to him rummaging around in cupboards for a minute until he swears and comes back out.

 

“I'm gonna be right back!”

 

“What are you-”

 

Liam is out the door before Zayn can even finish his sentence. His head flops back in his arms, pouting as he waits. Pouting turns into grinning as he buries his nose in his arms, then his whole face.

 

He's enjoying the content moment until a darkness inside of him reminds him he's forgotten to tell Liam something important and he knows he's gonna have to tell Liam before he leaves again tomorrow night. Zayn ignores him.

 

 _‘You know he's not all the way there right?’_ it murmurs in Zayn's head.

 

 _“What?”_ Zayn hisses. He looks into the mirror across from him so he can see Lux.

 

He’s floating on his back casually above the bed with his hands resting lazily over his tummy as he watches Zayn, swaying back and forth leisurely. He looks like a leaf when it slowly falls from a tree only it never touches the ground.

 

For the most part, Zayn knows how to keep him from surfacing now as long as he stays concentrated. But he can't get away from his own reflection. He never could.

 

 _“Oh, now you can hear me?”_ Lux yawns in the mirror, as if he's bored.

 

_“I said he’s not all the way there.”_

 

Zayn rolls his eyes.

 

“And what the fuck is that supposed to mean mate?”

 

_“It means if you plan on really fucking right now you should know you're about to fuck a sex demon who doesn't know how to control his power. And you’re about to take it up your non-existent ass. Unless you wanna die, you better not shoved me too far away.”_

 

Lux invasively picked everything he knows about Liam from Zayn's brain, to Zayn's annoyance. Now he thinks he knows Liam better than Zayn does.

 

“If he wasn't all the way here, he wouldn't be able to talk or move right now.”

 

Lux looks up towards the ceiling.

 

_“Not necessarily…”_

 

“I think I know more about his dissociative disorder than you do.”

 

_“Nah… I think that part of him you claim to be a “disorder” has just been triggered and it's brought out the actual sex demon in him now that he's in the mood to fuck. He doesn't know how to control that part of himself yet. He can't even control when his mind already unhinges himself from his body as it is, even when he was human. This is no different. He’s gonna destroy your ass.”_

 

“I don't claim he has a disorder. It's called depersonalization and he can't control it because people with that can't control personality disorders. He doesn't have a different persona.”

 

Lux laughs.

 

_“And just where do you think that mouth of his just came from? The words may be in reach of his vocabulary but that wasn't Liam talking.”_

 

“He doesn't have a fucking split personality.” Zayn hisses at him. Lux roll his eyes in the mirror.

 

_“He doesn't have any kind of “disorder” dumbass. It's called projection and it's perfectly natural. Rare. But natural nonetheless. He’s been doing it his entire life and it's probably been even more intense now that he’s a demon. You’ve been calling his brain dysfunctional when he's been able to something not even I can do. Leaving his body at will.”_

 

“Humans don’t project themselves out of their bodies.”

 

_“Disassociating… projecting. Same thing. He still leaves his physical body and he doesn't even know it. I saw him do it at least 4 times in the space of an hour earlier. I counted. He didn't even realise he was doing it. That’s dangerous around demons. I could’ve swallowed his soul right there if I wanted to but you know he's like your soulmate or whatever the fuck so that might be kind of fucked up, even for me. Now that he’s aroused, that dark pit will replace whatever part of him leaves. Change it into something not so pure.”_

 

“Why don't you just go back to sleep or something?”

 

 _“I don't sleep."_ Lux shrugs.

 

_"And I’m just trying to help you out, guy. You're the one that bit him when you didn't even have to. I wasn't going to kill him despite what you think. Now you've turned him into a demon and you won't even let me teach him how to handle his power without going apeshit. So you can suffer your own bloody consequences. I don’t know if being fucked by a half-blood will have the same effect on your body as an actual incubus. I know you have a hard time taking dick so you try to compensate for that with your mouth. But that's not gonna work right now. He doesn't know how to tame his demon and that kid is pretty damn powerful. I suggest you brace yourself now or this is gonna get very painful and very messy.”_

 

Zayn’s known about Liam's disassociating for as long as he's known him. It was… kind of a rollercoaster ride for Zayn, acting like he didn't know everything.

 

Liam always had his head in the clouds as they say, but Zayn could usually get him to come back. Even the sun up there with the clouds had to come back down every day, so he figured Liam did too. It wasn't something Zayn ever considered was anything wrong with Liam at first. He used to say he was just “daydreaming” so Zayn always thought Liam was just a really dreamy guy, in both senses of that notion.

 

It wasn't until they were older when Zayn realised there was actually something wrong. Liam completely spaced out for almost 3 hours when he came to a sleepover at Zayn's house with Harry, Anthony, Louis and Niall when they were about 9.

 

Louis thought it'd be funny to see how he'd react to being poked with a pin needle but he didn't seem to feel anything at all, staring mutely at the TV while everyone else watched him until Zayn made them leave him alone. Liam's mum didn’t let him sleep over anymore after that.

 

That was when Zayn knew something wasn't normal about it but he never asked because Liam didn't like to talk about it anymore. It got worse when his dad left.

 

He was never really _there_ , to begin with. Physically he was but the person inside wasn't. Like, maybe that's where Liam got it from.

 

They had the strangest relationship Zayn had ever seen. Practically strangers despite the fact that they were father and son. Liam and his dad were always emotionally detached from each other. His dad was kind of really old when they had Liam. People used to confuse him for being his grandfather. One random day, he disappeared and never came back. No explanation or warning. Liam didn't really seem to notice. He kinda acts like his dad never even existed. That was one thing no one ever mentioned to him. He turned into a different person entirely after that.

 

He spaced out more often and it turned him into an almost zombie-like state. It was really scary sometimes. Like he wasn't there at all for long periods of time. Sometimes he really did look dead. That's why Zayn was always so protective of Liam. People made fun of him for it and everyone called him the dopey freak that stared into space and it pissed Zayn off cause _no one knew what was going on._

 

He never let Liam do drugs or drink or anything he thought could mess with his state of mind. Zayn's greatest fear, even more than thunder or open-water, was that one day Liam would leave, and he wouldn't come back like how his dad did.

 

When Harry found his meds in his locker last year, the first person he came to about it was Zayn. He was glad Liam was being treated for it at least but he felt so awful for him, feeling like he had to keep such a huge aspect of his life a secret. But Zayn never crossed any lines with his privacy about it whenever he lied about going to a doctor or therapy.

 

The medicine didn't make it go away obviously. Zayn didn't actually think it did anything at all. It just made him feel more dead inside than he already did. That's what he told Harry and Zayn _hated_ that. He hated everyone that made Liam feel like that… which was mostly everyone except for Harry.

 

If Liam has really been projecting out of his body whenever he disassociated all this time like Lux says… then Zayn supposes that made sense. Escaping the prison of his body was all Liam ever did when he got too stressed. But now that he's a demon, there's no telling what that dark pit would do to his body when he has sex without actually being there.

 

Now that Zayn thinks about it, his eyes _did_ seem a little darker. Oh… _shit_.

 

Suddenly struck with nerves from what is possibly about to happen now, Zayn mentally locks Liam's bedroom door from across the room as he speeds into his bathroom like a mad man, taking the fastest bathroom break in history and jumping right into the shower.

 

He was a _shit_ bottom (NO PUN INTENDED _JESUS)_. He’ll admit that he had no ass and he didn't really enjoy being on the receiving end, to be honest, which is why he rarely ever let anyone near his ass. But he did for Liam that time because Lux could’ve killed him if he didn't do something and… it was brutal. He couldn't walk straight for the following week after.

 

Lux has been _pretty_ busy this past month and a half at the expense of Zayn's ass. He didn't bother to ever ease into it or anything so it was painful as shit every time Lux decided to sleep with a boy. But Lux likes feeling like he might tear open. Zayn does _not_.

 

It was getting easier than what it used to be but… it was still taking some time to actually get into. Zayn wasn't gonna be caught dead doing this again without preparing himself this time.

 

So, he cleans himself out and opens himself up as much as he can. He’s moving like hell to dry off immediately when he's done, fixing his hair and making himself look pretty then getting back in position.

 

 _“You look sexy.”_ Lux smiles in the mirror. Zayn gives him the finger in response.

 

_“You're welcome. That felt really good didn’t it? Digging all up in there.”_

 

“Will you fuck off?”

 

 _“Don't mind me. I'll be quiet. I’m just here to watch your asshole get torn apart. You're braver than I thought.”_ Lux snorts.

 

“Well this isn't a peep show.”

 

_“What the fuck do you expect me to do? I'm in the bloody mirror again because of you, I didn't ask to be!”_

 

“Close your eyes.” Zayn smiles.

 

Lux shakes his head.

 

_“I bet you'll cry.”_

 

“I bet you'd get off on watching me cry wouldn't you?”

 

Lux shrugs.

 

_“Probably. Have you ever even bottomed without me?”_

 

“Tried it. Once. Worst sex of my entire life.”

 

_“That's cause you let some prick with whisky dick try to fuck you mate. Maybe this will be a good change for you… you know you’ve really been selling yourself short.”_

 

“Maybe you should _suck my dick_.” Zayn hisses when Lux finds the memory of it in his head and purposefully replays the tragedy.

 

“ _Oh, darling. I’d love to_.” Lux licks his lips as he smirks at him. Zayn scoffs in disgust.

 

_“Don't act like you’re not attracted to me. Narcissus would've killed to fuck me. In fact, he did. If suicide counts. Now that I know what I actually look like I’d say it was worth the effort.”_

 

“You need to get it out of your head that I'm _anything_ like him. You don't know me. Just because you look like me doesn't mean _shit_. Seeing your face every day of my life _disgusts_ me. He didn’t want to fuck you, he wanted to get AWAY from you so badly he fucking drowned himself. He left you in hell for a _reason_. He probably hated you just as much as I do.”

 

Lux nods his head mockingly.

 

“ _Whatever you say babe_. _And just cause I'd fuck you doesn't mean I like you._ ” he rolls his eyes, continuing to float on his back as he watches Zayn laying on the bed. He squints at Zayn then.

 

 _“A little tip for you since you're so sensitive. Right before he gets into it, you should turn on your belly with your flat ass straight up on your knees and arch your back. It won't hurt as much.”_ He says as he casually flicks a flame down his arm and across his fingers, tossing it in the air so it dies out, only to do it again, purposefully burning Zayn's skin like he always does.

 

Zayn sucks in a tight breath. He could never get used to his flesh burning. He doesn't know how Lux can stand it cause it burns him too. But then again, he did live in _hell_.

 

He looks at Zayn again slowly

 

“ _Or you could just break the damn mirror if you really want me to fuck off. I'd gladly take his demon dick for you.”_ He offers generously.

 

“No… I _want_ you to watch and I want you to enjoy it while you can cause tomorrow is the last time you’re _ever_ seeing his face again.” Zayn snaps.

 

Liam appears then and Zayn jumps at the sudden noise.

 

“... who are you talking to?” he asks slowly. Zayn smiles.

 

“Myself. Obviously.”

 

It’s not really a lie.

 

Liam can probably guess who he was talking to on his own so Zayn quickly moves on before he can even ask.

 

“What took you so long?” he plays it casual despite his manic heart rate, silently praying Liam doesn't notice.

 

“Sorry,” Liam hops back on Zayn. Zayn looks at his reflection again. Lux is gone.

 

“Mum just left and I had to explain where my abs came from.”

 

Zayn laughs, closing his eyes as Liam's hands run up his back again, all slicked up and smooth with oil now. It feels so good. His heart slows down again as he hums, letting his head nod to the side.

 

_“What'd you tell her?”_

 

Liam's fingers press into his lower back and glide around his waist.

 

“That a demon bit me and altered the makeup of my body.”

 

Zayn nods slowly.

 

“That’s lovely.”

 

“She thought so too.”

 

Zayn snorts lightly, shaking his head. Liam massages over his shoulder blades then.

 

"Wow you're... _really_ tight," Liam kneads down his back. Zayn snorts.

 

"Never been told that one before,"

 

 _“How's that feel?”_ He says, low in his ear.

 

“Your hands all over me or your boner against my ass?”

 

Liam’s lips graze against his earlobe

 

“ _Both_ ,” he kisses the space right below his ear where his neck and jawline meet. Zayn's head automatically tilts up, exposing more of his neck for Liam to access. He gladly accepts the invitation.

 

“What were you… doing down there?” Zayn asks slowly.

 

“Just grabbing a few things,” Liam says into his neck.

 

“What _kind_ of things?”

 

He feels Liam smile briefly before going back to massaging his back, thoroughly moving all the way up to his shoulders then back down his spine again with diligent, gentle fingers.

 

“Some oil, and whatever.”

 

“ _Oil and whatever_ …” Zayn mimics his voice, nodding.

 

“Yeah, how can I give you a proper massage without oil?”

 

Zayn opens his eyes, watching Liam again in the mirror.

 

“Is that what this is?”

 

Liam nods, coming down Zayn's lower back, around the waistband of his sweats.

 

“Are you… sure?”

 

Liam nods again, leaning down and kissing over where his tailbone ends.

 

Zayn bites his bottom lip, looking over to the side of them in the mirror.

 

“Then what's that next to me?”

 

Liam shakes his head, lips still attached to Zayn as he begins to pull down his sweats. Zayn sticks his bum in the air a little so they’re easier to pull down.

 

“Don’t worry about it. That's for me.”

 

Liam’s hands come back up and start to massage circles, slowly, on each side of Zayn's cheeks. His tongue trails down further and he feels Zayn shudder under him. His thumbs press a little harder as he makes bigger circles, spreading his cheeks further apart until he sees his pert, pink little hole and wow Zayn can not believe this was really happening right now because Liam is, in fact, all the way there, no demons present.

 

He could not be more grateful for having the ability to move at light speed than he is in that instant. Also the fact that Liam is doing this without even knowing beforehand that he showered is gonna be fuelling his ego for a very long time.

 

Liam's tongue drags all the way down, barely touching Zayn now, just skidding over it and pressing his lips to the sensitive skin right above his balls. A ripple goes down Zayn's spine as he sucks in a breath. Liam smiles, pulling Zayn up a little on his knees so he could access the skin better, a position Zayn is not used to in this scenario at all. Liam can tell from the way every little touch makes Zayn’s breath catch and shake that no one has ever done this to him before, which is kind of funny cause Liam's done this a lot and he's supposed to be the virgin here.

 

Liam drags the tip of his tongue back up and swivelling around the skin close to the hole. Zayn pushes back against him, trying to get him to touch the important area but Liam just goes back up. He listens to Zayn bite down on a small whine when he does it again, unable to help to snicker a little.

 

“ _prick_ ,” Zayn puffs, attempting to sound annoyed but ending up sounding more breathless than anything else. Liam’s tongue flattens this time, licking all the way up sloppily and Zayn can’t bite back the pleading sound that escapes from the bottom of his throat this time.

 

Liam does it again, teasing the area by going down and back up. This is probably the only thing Liam can say he for sure knows he's good at.

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Zayn pushes against Liam's tongue again, _“Lima… p...lease.”_

 

Liam ignores his begging because his voice is wavering a little and it's seriously turning Liam on, being able to actually do that to Zayn. Having him squirming with each flick of his tongue, desperate for him to go further. He keeps mouthing over it, kissing and swirling his tongue in circles until he's figured he's tortured Zayn enough, pushing his tongue inside without warning.

 

Zayn's entire back arches, inadvertently making Liam's tongue go in further, a deep groan rumbling from inside him. Liam looks up in the mirror in front of them, making eye contact with Zayn as he scissors his tongue in and out of him.

 

Zayn's mouth is open against his arm, all the euphonious sounds pouring out of him being muffled. Liam watches how the curves of his back and shoulder blades move together as they flex like a wave of water, golden and smooth, even with the dark scars… god, he's perfect.

 

He didn't need much opening up to be honest but… Liam was actually enjoying doing it as much as Zayn was feeling it. Liam curls up his tongue as he brings it back out, repeating that until Zayn can't even keep his eyes open anymore.

 

It was almost instinctive to Liam now, how much control he had over not only his body but Zayn's too. He knows exactly what to do to clench the pelvic floor muscles and slow both of their breathing and allow the urge to ejaculate to pass in Zayn. How to make him go slack or clench up or cum if he wanted just from his tongue alone as many times as he wanted, just like Lux said he would. But he didn't want Zayn to finish just yet. Not like this. He knows how he can make it feel even better. He only wanted him to do it once. So he edges him out for just a few more minutes, building him up to the brink of bursting, then pulling up just before he can.

 

 _“Lima fuc-_ ”

 

He flips Zayn over onto his back in one swift movement making his limbs flop about and his dick slap against his belly, hard and leaking. His glistening, tattooed chest is moving up and down in long, drawn out breaths.

 

Liam's smears his fingers in the drippings on his belly, smirking as he tastes it.

 

“Are you gonna... rearrange my guts with that third leg of yours or just stand there with your smug grin?”

 

Liam quirks his eyebrow at him then leans down and spreads his legs apart gently with his fingertips, his face hovering over Zayn's dick.

 

“I’m glad you said that. _Now_ I think I'm gonna edge you out a bit further since you think you're the one in control here.”

 

Zayn's face crumbled, bested by Liam's unexpected but incredibly _hot_ dominance.

 

It was almost ironic. Their demons have switched their roles. Liam's always been the submissive one that does what he's told and Zayn was the bossy one. Now, Zayn's nodding in compliance under him.

 

Liam licks a thick strip up Zayn's length, showing off with his no hands thing as they come up under Zayn's thighs to hook on either side of his waist, rubbing his inner thigh as he took the head into his mouth and started sucking.

 

Zayn's head nods back as he groaned, springing a little. Liam didn't mind. Zayn knew he could take it.

 

 _“And… you talk about my n...neck?”_ Zayn laughs.

 

_“You don’t even have a gag… I can't make you… choke on it.”_

 

Liam shakes his head, his mouth a little too full to retort right now, which Zayn must think gives him the perfect opportunity to just say whatever he wants and get away with it.

 

Liam unhooks his hand from Zayn's thigh, moving back down to press onto the space between Zayn's balls and hole, skirting over the hole with his middle finger, still slicked up with oil while putting pressure on the skin beneath it.

 

That part was just outside of Zayn's g-spot, and still sensitive from Liam’s tongue. Zayn's legs clasp around Liam's head as he gasps again wanting to squeeze his eyes shut but also wanting to keep watching how his dick disappears in Liam's mouth over and over as his head bobs between his legs. Liam had an _amazing_ mouth on him.

 

Every time Liam's thumb put pressure on the outside of his prostate, he'd suck hard on the very tip of the head and tease his middle finger all at the same time and it makes Zayn's body pulse and shake like a tremor going through him, whimpering every time. The sound of his voice alone could make Liam cum.

 

 _“oh.. my.. fuck,”_ Zayn breathes out shakily, his stomach dipping repeatedly. Liam doesn't let up with his little throuple of tactics to drive Zayn up a wall right now, sliding his middle finger all the way inside and fingering his prostate from the inside and outside.

 

 _“L-Li-”_ he can't even finish his name _“‘m gonna c-cu-”_

 

Liam pulls off with a smack, letting Zayn's wet dick slap back against his tummy again and taking his hand back.

 

“I know babe.” he sighs, wiping the corners of his mouth.

 

Zayn’s legs fall as he whines, going to touch himself but Liam pins his hand at his side so he won't.

 

“You're gonna finish when I let you. Once.”

 

Zayn's eyes roll back as he lets his head collapse but Liam pulls his legs back up.

 

“ _Such a prick_.” Zayn weakly mutters in a small voice. His head is all wrinkly from his stressed expression and with the flush all over his cheeks… Liam just wants to stress him out even more.

 

Liam reaches over next to him and grabs the condom he got from his manhunt downstairs, dropping it on Zayn's sweaty chest.

 

“I didn’t know you had a belly piercing.” Liam comments, ogling the two diamonds on Zayn’s navel. Zayn slaps his hand away when he touches them.

 

 _“Lux did that._ ” He grumbles although he secretly likes it. Liam leans over it, hovering at Zayn’s belly button as he smirks at Zayn struggling to use his fingers.

 

 _“I can't open this,”_ he sighs as he shakes his head after trying to rip it with shaking fingers. He's too oversensitized and his fingers feel like noodles.

 

“Use your mouth,” Liam tells him.

 

Zayn pauses, looking up at Liam as a shadow casts over his eyes.

 

“To _open_ it.” Liam clarifies, laughing.

 

Zayn actually could do it with his mouth. But he can show Liam that later cause he’s a shaky mess right now and he’s in no position to start slinging tricks around.

 

So he tears it with his teeth then sits up and pulls Liam's pants down to roll it on, not even bothering to be sexy about it. When he collapses onto his back again, he makes like he's gonna turn over but Liam leans over him.

 

“I wanna see how good it feels on your face.”

 

 _“No, you don't.”_ Zayn breathes _“You wanna see me cry… because you're demonic.”_

 

Liam lifts one of his legs up a little under his knee and rubs his dick up the crease of his ass, teasing his hole with the tip and Zayn watches as his eyes darken, as if saying that out loud actually triggers it.

 

“I wanna long stroke you on your back ‘til you're half dead so the next time you call me a prick I can bring up what your fucked out face looks like mid-stroke.”

 

“ _Jesus_ ,” Zayn groans “And _I'm_ the dirty one?”

 

Liam leans down and kisses him, Zayn biting into Liam's lip and gasping hotly against his mouth when he slides in in one smooth motion, sticking to his word.

 

“W _here_ … _d_ id you _learn_ …to… _talk like that?”_ Zayn manages to pant into his mouth, as he pulls almost all the way out, save for the tip, then thrusts again.

 

_“and... f..fuck like this…”_

 

“Do you like it?” Liam says against his neck. He doesn't even sound like himself.

 

 _“Yes,”_ he pants softly

 

Liam does it again, harder.

 

_“Fuck yes,”_

 

“I had a pretty vulgar teacher growing up,” he says, repeating the motion, making Zayn clench up. It almost makes Liam bust but, he holds it out, rolling his hips again. And again. And _again_. And Zayn's fingers dig across his back as he moans in agony every time. The good kind of agony.

 

 _“I didn't… t-teach you how to.. do this_.” he holds on to Liam as he lets his leg drop to hit it at a different angle, closer to where he knows his prostate is, purposefully _just_ _barely_ touching it.

 

“ _God_ you're--”

 

“I'm _what?”_ Liam stops moving, _daring_ Zayn to say prick again. A tear actually falls down Zayn's face. Okay, maybe he was right about Liam wanting to see him cry. Not Liam. Something else deep inside him that's making him feel like he's got too much power over Zayn right now. Something _dark_.

 

Zayn bites his mouth closed, keeping it shut and burying his face in Liam's neck, accepting his fate and ultimately caving into submission. Zayn's not gonna lie… he's a little scared he might kill him.

 

 _“You wanna cum?”_ Liam asks. He wanted to hear his voice. Zayn nods against his neck.

 

_“Say it.”_

 

_“Ye-...yes. Please, fuck Liam… let me cum… please,”_

 

He abandons the slow and teased stroking and fucks Zayn into his mattress then, not wanting to be too rough because Zayn's neck still technically broken but not at all wanting to hold back either, holding both hands over the headboard above Zayn's head as he thrusts.

 

When he hits Zayn’s soft spot finally, Zayn digs painfully into his back this time as he swore and cried out Liam’s name, his own eyes flashing completely black for a moment then back to brown. Liam briefly smells that familiar burning again but the sensation is blocked out in the next instant as he climaxes. He doesn't let up or slow down, hitting it hard enough for Zayn to release his load shortly after, leaving him trembling.

 

Zayn opens his eyes again and almost swears in anger. He passed out for a few seconds. Which is just great. He didn't get to experience his own damn orgasm.

 

Liam lays on top of him for a moment, breathing against each other, waiting for their hearts to level out as they come back down, both of them drenching in lust. Liam’s starting to think maybe he does have a pain kink he never knew about as he feels the scratches dug into his back healing. But the burn of it feels good.

 

He finally pulls out after a while, throwing the condom in the trash and falling on his back next to Zayn. He uses a towel on the floor to clean them off then they both stare up at his ceiling with lulled eyes, both of them feeling high as shit. Whatever dark haze that was that took over leaves Liam finally, leaving him feeling human again.

 

“You know, if I had’ve known you were so… ” Zayn utters dazedly. He can't even finish his sentence. Liam didn’t even know he was like that.

 

“Seriously, I don't know where that came from,” he says honestly then looks over at Zayn. His hair's a wreck, he's got an even layer of sweat coating his skin. His chest is still heaving and Liam isn’t 100% sure his eyes are even opened. He looks so ruined and it almost makes Liam want to do it all over again.

 

“It's the demon in you.”

 

They both start laughing tiredly then, even though they both know that’s exactly where that came from, pulling up the cover. Zayn wraps his body around Liam's lazily, resting his head on Liam's chest.

 

“Can I ask you something?” Liam outlines small circles on Zayn's shoulder with his fingertips.

 

“Course.” Zayn nods a little nervously, unsure if he can answer whatever Liam could possibly ask right now.

 

Liam bites his bottom lip for a moment before asking.

 

“Did you… _finger_ yourself before I came back upstairs?” He says quickly. Zayn laughs, curt as he shakes his head.

 

“I was hoping you wouldn't notice my supersonic shower escapade.”

 

“I _thought_ you tasted like my Marc Jacobs daisy…”

 

Zayn plants his forehead down on Liam. He may as well have shoved a bottle of perfume up his ass.

 

“ _Wow I am an idiot_ …” he mumbles.

 

Liam shakes his head, lifting Zayn's face up to him.

 

“Actually… I think I like this look better.”

 

“My fucked out face? Yeah you mentioned that.”

 

Liam laughs, shaking his head as he brushes Zayn's hair back.

 

“No, really. You look… arresting.”

 

Zayn smiles dopily, nudging Liam's cheek with his lips, kissing him.

 

“I didn't know you had such a wide vocabulary range.”

 

Before Liam can turn his head to kiss him properly, Zayn turns away, looking at the mirror across from them as if someone has called his name, staring at it for a moment. His eyes go far away for an instant. Liam wants to ask him what he's looking at but he looks back at him before he can.

 

“Get all dolled up just to have you expertly take the life out of me and destroy my whole face, hair and body. That’s _art_. If you learn anything from me at all, know that sex is art.”

 

He turns Liam's head to the side so he'll look at them in the mirror too instead of staring at Zayn.

 

“Look at what we did.”

 

Liam holds him contently as they gaze at what they've made of themselves.

 

“Demons are sexy.” Zayn breaks the moment.

 

“And I thought you saying _fuck_ all the time now was hot.”

 

Liam closes his eyes as he tries to contain his snort.

 

“Was it better than the first time?”

 

Zayn shakes his head.

 

“You didn't swear at me or try to kill me the first time.”

 

“Wow, it was that bad?” Liam snorts. Zayn starts tracing shapes into Liam's bare stomach, running his fingers along the creases.

 

“No. It was controversial. Just like the entire hell week before. Obviously, it wasn't _me_ the whole time. And it was dangerous. I thought you were about to die so I panicked and forced myself out so I could bite you before that happened. You were seduced by a demon and literally almost died several times that week. Hell, week shouldn't have happened.”

 

Liam holds him against his chest, looking over at the crack in the wall where it happened. He forgot that started off with him holding Lux against the wall. He felt different than Zayn… but that might've been because they didn't use a condom. But even if they had, if Zayn hadn't taken over and bit him when he did, Liam would be dying right now… meaning Lux lied. He _was_ gonna kill him despite what he said.

 

Liam doesn't know why he's even getting upset as he thinks about that. What was he supposed to expect from a demon? He was gonna lie to get whatever he wants. It still kind of stings though, feeling manipulated. Liam shakes those thoughts out of his head.

 

He spends one hour having a meaningless conversation with an evil creature from hell that's feeding off Zayn like a parasite and then he goes and actually starts to… like him? Yeah. He needed to get out of Zayn's body immediately.

 

Zayn looks up at him, noticing him frowning.

 

“Lima, it wasn't bad at all the first time.” Zayn kisses his chest, bringing Liam back to the present.

 

“It was just a different scenario. You still feel the same.”

 

Liam smiles a little, trying to translate that he was fine about everything. Well, not really but, Zayn didn't need to know all the other stuff. He didn't want to talk about Lux right now. Or ever.

 

“Yeah?”

 

Zayn nods, leaning up and kissing him on the lips sleepily. Liam can feel the tether wrapping around them, holding them together.

 

 _“You feel so fucking good Liam.”_ Zayn whispers then pulls away to laugh briefly as if he's shocked that he just said that himself.

 

“What?” Liam laughs. Zayn shakes his head.

 

“Nothing. It's just… if you had’ve told me a month and a half ago that I would be willingly taking _anyone's_ cock up my ass, I would've literally cried bloody murder.”

 

 _“Really?”_ Liam's eyebrows raise as he looks at Zayn's sleepy face. Zayn cracks one eye open.

 

“Why is that such a shock?”

 

“It's not!” Liam laughs but Zayn narrows his eyes at him.

 

“You thought I was some kind of kinky power bottom that screams daddy didn't you?”

 

Liam doesn't want to lie and say he didn't.

 

“You say pretty _kinky_ stuff sometimes…” he trails off.

 

Zayn wraps his arms around Liam again as he starts to make horrific sex noises.

 

 _“...pull tighter,”_ He pants softly in Liam's ear.

 

_“Fuck me harder daddy… choke me!”_

 

Stuff like that.

 

Liam pulls away from him, shaking his head with his mouth agape.

 

_“Oh my god please stop,”_

 

 _“Slit my fucking throat on your cock! Murder my asshole with your monster dick papi! Fuck yes,”_ he whines, squeezing Liam's sides.

 

“PAPI?!” Liam gasps in laughter.

 

 _“Eat through my ass… Let me snort your cum, big daddy, luli chupse!”_ He pretends to have an orgasm all over again against Liam. It's almost scary how well he can mimic it. Liam didn't even want to know what that last part meant in English.

 

His head falls against Zayn's as they both burst out laughing.

 

“You are so _disgusting!”_ Liam cringed although he doesn't really mean it. He’s very used to when Zayn would say stuff like that all the time. Even when they were younger, he swore like a sailor more than anyone Liam had ever met and said dirty stuff that made Liam blush constantly. And Zayn wonders where Liam learned to talk like that…

 

“And you're way too good at faking it,” Liam adds. Zayn laughs.

 

“Does it gross you out when I talk like that?” he asks.

 

“Strangely enough… it's never grossed me out when you talk like that.” Liam says honestly.

 

 _“Beautiful, conceited and vulgar,”_ Zayn says mockingly. Three most used words used to describe Zayn Malik in Manningtree.

 

“I’m not really like that…” he sighs, relaxing again.

 

“I know.”

 

Not that Liam obsessively sat around wondering what Zayn was into before or anything… but he was probably just as curious as Zayn was about him.

 

Zayn always made off-handed comments that’d make one assume he was into really kinky stuff but, he was so sarcastic most of the time it was impossible to know if he was serious or not. Liam doesn't know where he gets it from.

 

Whenever they talked about sex for real, Liam would always excuse himself from the conversation and zone out, leaving Zayn and Harry to talk about it without him so he wouldn't have to talk about it himself. So he never knew about what Zayn was into either aside from the fact everyone knew he loved kissing and he was known for giving amazing head.

 

He's never really wanted to know in full, to be honest cause then he'd just know the details of Zayn and Louis or some other guy and… he didn't need the mental image. He's walked in on Louis and Zayn once. They were about 15, halfway making out in the quad, halfway going way further. He's never wanted to know what else they did when they weren't in public.

 

“Are you thinking about it now?” Zayn murmurs. Liam nods.

 

“You… came right?”

 

“I promise I wasn’t faking.” Zayn mumbles.

 

“It happened so fast… I think I might've blacked out.”

 

Zayn doesn't say anything in response to that. Liam almost thinks he's fallen asleep but his breath hasn't evened out yet. Liam can feel his heart pattering uneven against his, though.

 

“I'm never gonna wake up.” He murmurs. Liam wasn't tired at all, despite his ragged breathing. He hadn't slept in almost two weeks. But he could if he wanted.

 

“I'm gonna join you.” he says watching Zayn’s breath even out finally, willing his too as well.

 

_“Night daddy.”_

 

“I will literally throw you out of my house if you ever call me that again,” Liam mumbles in Zayn's hair.

 

 _“You'll get into it.”_ He sighs.

 

“I'm an extremely bossy boyfriend as you should know.”

 

Liam’s body has tingles spreading everywhere.

 

“You're really my _boyfriend?”_

 

He almost can't believe this is real right now.

 

 _“I've always… been your boyfriend Lima...”_ he just barely manages to mumble as he nods off. Liam smiles a little, finally nodding off too.

 

  
*

 

After a few hours go by, a low growl wakes Liam up. He’s under his cover alone. His first instinct is to almost panic until he sees the light on in his bathroom.

 

**“You IDIOT!”**

 

Multiple voices sound through the door as the growl rips through the air from the bathroom. It sounds like _Lux_. Immediately after there’s a loud crash that sounds like shattering glass. Liam jolts as he sits up. There are a few bangs on the walls then.

 

 _“Luxuria… please stop,”_ Zayn’s voice begs briefly.

 

**_“HE’LL KILL US BOTH IF YOU GO BACK THERE ZAYN-”_ **

 

Lux’s angry voice cuts off immediately before he can finish whatever he’s saying. He sounded _terrified_. It goes quiet for a moment as Liam listens through the door, completely on edge. There’s a dragging sound of glass on the floor as Zayn groans a little.

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hiccups as a sob catches in his throat.

 

Liam stays quiet for as long as he listens to Zayn shaky breathing from his bed. It feels like hours go by before Zayn finally comes out of the bathroom. It’s too dark to really see but he looks unscathed for the most part.

 

“ _Zayn_ -”

 

Zayn shushes Liam as he climbs back into his bed and gently pushes him back to lay down.

 

“I’m sorry I woke you.”

 

Liam shakes his head.

 

“Wh… what’s wrong?”

 

 _“It's okay. Go back to sleep_.” Zayn kisses him lightly. Liam can taste blood on his lips.

 

Liam bites his lip as he tucks himself under Zayn against his chest instead of asking him what the hell that was in there, listening to his manic heartbeat as he holds him, beating just as wildly as his own.

 

He listens to it until they level out, forcing himself into a dullness as he drifts away from his mind until he can’t hear anything anymore. He can’t hear Zayn’s uneven breath as he silently cried in his bathroom or Lux’s angry growl and fear in his voice echoing in his head anymore. He can’t hear the eldritch of Zayn’s frantic heartbeat. He hears nothing. But he can still feel the overwhelming sense of misgiving that Zayn will even be here when he wakes up again.

 

 _“I love you.”_ Liam sniffs.

 

He can’t hear what Zayn says in response so he keeps the pulsing ambience of the moment still as they hold each other in the silence he’s in, trying to pause their lives all over again. He could really use that pause button more than ever right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliffhanger! Ahhh! (please don't hate me!)
> 
> I REALLY did not want to end on this note but I swear it was unavoidable with the POV. Remember if you kill me, I can't update :P (I'll probably post it some time after Zayn's birthday)
> 
> On a different note, the next chapter will be called "Cursed" and there will be a lot more of Zayn's POV this time! x


	6. Cursed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam has bouts of amnesia that displaces him from knowing where Zayn has gone... but this isn't normal amnesia. Sophia shows her true colours. Harry has a wicked trip on an astral plane and journey's to a different world alongside Liam. Lux and Zayn come to an agreement.

 

 

 

Everyone in town wakes up at 5 in the morning today.

 

The first thing everyone learns when they watch the early news is, surprise! surprise! More teenagers have ended up missing and more are lethally ill and in the hospital.

 

Except no one was surprised and life still went on as if nothing was wrong. Unlike every other recent death and tragedy, the illness more and more students are coming down with is seemingly caused naturally.

 

Unlike everyone else, though, Harry knew better than to believe that. Ben and Anthony have been missing for a week but they were allegedly seen driving on a road that lead out of town and haven't been back since. Tyler Quinn disappeared a few days ago. Cher and her boyfriend Joey were in intensive care. Along with Eleanor Calder, Andy Samuels, and 3 other kids from the 2 high schools up the street from theirs all had the same viral infection in their bloodstream and hospitalised on same day yesterday. People are still waiting to find out if they have it and will probably end up in the hospital soon too.

 

Now, on top of the curfew for the supposed serial killer on the loose and the still ripe depression for the continuous drop in population of youth in their small town, everyone had to worry about a contagious, deadly virus rapidly spreading around. The news confirmed that it’s believed to be sexually transmitted so everyone, especially those 16-25, were advised to get tested asap. Now people were too scared to have sex. It was at least one thing Harry didn't have to worry about himself this time. He hadn’t hooked up with anyone in _months_. Considering how much Liam and Zayn have been getting wild in the sheets these days, he just thought life wasn’t fair all-ways right now.

 

Harry skips the typically horrible news and spends his morning as he usually does when he’s stressing out, getting up bright and early before donning a plain black sweatshirt with a square of psychedelic monochrome waves perfectly in the centre and tying a brown headband around his hair with little skulls all over it before heading to school before anyone else is there.

 

[The Less I Know The Better - Tame Impala](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2lzmpEs29M)

 

He sits out in the quad to relax his mind with weed and a square strip of LSD for later, listening to Tame Impala with his headphones in as he sits on a bench and stares into the vast empty space of Manningtree stretching out in front of him, letting the music course through him like blood in his veins.

 

Not even two months ago, the whole crew of lawbreakers would be here right now. Anthony and Ben would be arguing about something about their radically different religious beliefs. Jade and Perrie would be on either side of Zayn with their bodies tucked together like puzzle pieces. Cher would be sitting in Joey’s lap and making out. Niall would be laughing at literally everything and sometimes when they weren’t broken up, Louis would be here talking their ears off, fighting with Zayn for being the centre of attention. But, Cher and Joey were in the hospital and Niall moved back to Ireland and Louis and Jade were dead and Tony and Ben were missing, after probably running away together, and Perrie was at planned parenthood, dropping out of school while Zayn was in another fucking dimension.

 

It’s horribly depressing trying to smoke out here alone right now. It was so bizarre how one night has been spanning over the last month and a half. Like, maybe the night of the fire never actually ended. Maybe it broke the night and they’re all cursed to live in fear a chaos forever now on some kind of infinity loop of hell. Cause that’s what this feels like. Forever.

 

Harry closes his eyes with his joint dangling from his lips as he finds himself unable to actually smoke out here alone. This was his spot with his friends. This was their spot and the only one left in it was him, totally alone. Practically all his friends were disappearing now. He kind of wishes he could disappear too. He lets a tear fall down his face as the lyrics swirl around him like a halo over his head.

 

_‘Don’t make me wait forever… don’t make me wait forever’_

 

Out of nowhere, his joint is swiped from his mouth then as the earplugs are pulled from his ears.

 

When Harry opens his eyes in alarm, he’s met with Zayn crouching in front of him, bringing the joint up to his own lips as he smiles in front of Harry.

 

Harry jolts back, feeling his heart trying to jump out of his chest as black eyes flash in his head with the memory of Zayn’s neck split open all over again.

 

 _“Haz, it’s okay it’s just me!”_ Zayn drops the blunt to stop him from falling off the bench, holding his shoulders as he looks him in the eye. He's got his nose ring back and all the hoops back in his ears and he looks like the old Zayn again. He crosses his eyes at Harry with his tongue sticking out. It _is_ Zayn. Harry's eyes bulge.

 

 _“Z... fuck,”_ He throws his arms around Zayn’s neck frantically as he hugs him. He hasn’t genuinely seen or really had a chance to talked to Zayn since the night of the fire.

  
Zayn holds his back as they hug each other, his fists bunching up the sides of Harry’s sweatshirt. After not too long, Harry bursts into tears as his knees give out, the intensity of _everything_ deciding to hit him now as he holds his old friend for the first time in an eternity. Zayn crouches on the ground with him, letting Harry cry into him as they hold each other.

 

 _“Why are you fucking crying huh?”_ Zayn puffs as he laughs a little, sniffing from his own tears cloud in his eyes.

 

  
_“I’m sorry I killed you,”_ Harry tries to laugh but he throat closes up around his words as he chokes up.

 

  
_“You’re alright. I’m literally never gonna die. But if you try to kill me again I’m gonna do what Lux said.”_

  
Harry punches him in his side. They hug each other for a while until Harry can’t possibly have any more liquid in his eyes. Zayn wipes his face with his long sleeves, some oversized red sweatshirt that’s probably Liam’s, smiling tight-lipped as Harry blinks the tears out of his eyelashes.

 

“Umm,” Harry clears his throat as he laughs pathetically.

 

“I’m currently feeling way too sober so can we smoke this now or do you have somewhere else to be?”

 

He picks his joint back up. Zayn snorts.

 

“Is it laced with acid or peyote?”

 

“Acid.”

 

Harry was planning on letting his mind dissolve for the rest of the day. After he smoked this and swallowed the strip, he’d trip for about 10 or 12 hours. If he's lucky, he'll get 15. That's the longest he's ever been high for in one day. He wasn’t staying in school for very long. It’s too much for him to be in those empty halls anymore. The news even mentioned that the district might by considering combining all 3 high schools into one building at this point and tearing down the other two. That's how much things were falling apart right now. Getting high was the only way Harry really knew how to escape it all. 5:30-6 am in the quad just happened to be the perfect time and place to do it. And now that Zayn was here too, It was suddenly their place again.

 

Their place is when the sun hasn’t come up yet but the sky is still a wicked shade of ultraviolet blue and there’s an even layer of mist coating the ground ominously and everything is still quiet aside from the birds chirping everyone good morning. When the air still smells like the night and it’s just nippy enough to make you shiver but just fresh enough to make your lungs open up like they’re brand new. When the day was just waking up and Harry could come here and wake up too. Stimulate his senses and escape the nightmare, even if it’s for only a few hours at a time. Any break from the reality of forever is a break they could use right now. And he’d have it no other way than to do it with one of his best friends.

 

[MGMT - Electric Feel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbkv5xOLvnA)

 

“Alright let’s take a trip.” Zayn smiles, putting it between his lips and sparking fire straight from his hand with the snap of the fingers like a show-off, taking a hit as he falls back on the bench. Harry watches how he makes the smoke spiral out, twisting around like an eddy.

 

“That’s a sick trick. Can you show me how? The fire hands bit.”

 

They both laugh as Harry hops on the bench, lighting up like old times while Zayn tells him what he’s doing here.

 

Apparently, he just happened to walk by. Harry tells him he sent for him through his telepathic aura and told him to come save him. Zayn tells him he’s probably right.

 

After smoking the joint and letting two tabs acid dissolve on their tongues, time eventually disappears once they’ve lost all track of what universe they’re in. Zayn and Harry end up laying in the middle of the quad, splayed out on the ground across from each other on their stomachs, letting the indigo sky soak into their backs.

 

“My entire life has always been destined to be fucked Haz.”

 

Harry turns his head sideways, blinking at the colours coming down from the sky, wrapping around him like a blanket.

 

“Well… you’re technically immortal so when your corporeal form materialises again in the next life, maybe you’ll have your shit together finally.”

 

Zayn snorts, shaking his head.

 

“If it’s that easy, I might as well just off myself right now.”

 

Harry looks away from the sky to tilt his head up, looking at Zayn upside down across from him.

 

“Don’t even joke like that Z. If you’re thinking about hurting yourself again-”

 

“I’m not.” Zayn sighs. He already tried that. 

 

“I’m not even thinking about myself right now. I’m thinking about Liam. He’s my entire life and I fucked him over when I bit him. I didn’t know the actual repercussions beforehand and now he’s blacking out worse than before. I have to get that shit out of his body first. He’s the only priority in my mind right now. His shit first. Then mine. Whatever happens after doesn’t matter as long as Liam is safe.”

 

Harry nods, weaving his fingers through the blades of grass absently.

 

 _"Soooo..."_ he starts slowly before looking over at Zayn as he smirks.

 

"Are you guys like-"

 

"Yes." Zayn answers before he can even fully asks as he squeezes his eyes closed and grins wide, hugging his arms into himself like he's trying to suppress butterflies in his stomach.

 

_"Always yes."_

 

Harry smiles at him turning into an actual kitten. 

 

"And why'd you never fucking _tell me about this?"_

 

Zayn looks at him as he shrugs simply.

 

"Didn't wanna make you jealous."

 

Harry puffs out a short laugh.

 

"And I was too busy getting sacrificed to satan and shit anyways so..." Zayn shrugs again as he stares up at the sky blankly.

 

Harry doesn't laugh at that one. He kinda wanted to ask Zayn about something he recently discovered about that but he doesn't know if it'd be too personal or not. Harry goes for it anyways.

 

"Have you ever heard of a the  _Vanitas quoque Narcissi?"_  

 

It's a painting Harry found in the Enchiridion, translating to "Vanity of Narcissus" in Latin.

 

Zayn tenses immediately.

 

After a long silence, Harry almost wishes he didn't ask.  

 

"Yes." 

 

Harry gets a chill somehow even though the air is already cold. When he looks over at Zayn, he's standing up as his expression has gone far away. He doesn't look quite like himself anymore.

 

"I should go."

 

Harry stands up too.

 

"Wait, now?" He rushes as Zayn looks off ahead of them, nodding slowly.

 

 

"You’re going home?”

 

He looks at Harry again and he almost wishes he hadn't asked that either as Zayn stares at him with a glaze over his eyes.

 

"Yeah. I'm going home. But I'll see you guys later." 

 

His voice is so distant and icy now. It makes Harry shiver a little for some reason.

 

Harry blinks as a beam of light start to materialise over Zayn’s head, like a faint halo. It’s a purple-ish blue. Like the sky. Okay, he’s starting to trip too so he needs to get home as well before he’s unfit to drive.

 

“Do you need a ride? I’m about to go home too. I’m like tripping balls right now. There’s a halo over your head.” Harry laughs.

 

Zayn’s pupils are blown wide as he stares at Harry’s hair like he can see a halo too.

 

“You’ve got one already.” he points above Harry’s head.

 

“I want it to rub off on me.”

 

Harry snorts, shaking his head at how much of a mess they are as he takes one last drag from the joint, bringing it too his lips and lighting the end.

 

Zayn steps closer to Harry suddenly, nodding his head down.

 

_“Shotgun it.”_

 

The way he says that almost gives Harry no room to do anything else but exactly what he says. Like he’s giving Harry a choice but the option to say no isn’t really possible.

 

He inhales the smoke into his lungs as his eyes close, feeling his insides turning into glitter and trickling down his bones like rain. Zayn is at his mouth before he even opens his eyes, exhaling the smoke into him.

 

Instead of pulling away when it’s all gone, their lips melt into each other. There might be a tongue in there too but, Harry’s mind is too busy feeling rainbows splitting down the edges of his psyche to register it as his high has taken him a few levels away from feeling his senses properly.

 

He falls back on the bench again as moisture rushes into his mouth, _definitely_ feeling a tongue now… and a hand around his throat cutting off the oxygen to his brain, and another dick against his own sitting in his lap and heat he hasn’t felt in _months_ clenching up below his navel until it bursts like a rocket shooting off into space.

 

Harry gasps as he jolts, feeling burning lips continuing to nip at his while the white hot heat in his pants cools off. When it fully resonates what he's doing with _Zayn_  sitting on him right now, making him feel stuff he’s not supposed to feel, his eyes spring open.

 

Just as fast as his eyes open, he’s suddenly alone and gasping for his breath. He figures the LSD has kicked in _thoroughly_ now.

 

He wipes his wet mouth and stares down at the dampness in his tented pants, adjusting himself carefully and then feeling his tight throat in utter confusion.

 

_What the...fuck...?_

 

When he looks around it’s just him and the subtle strobing of light flashing around him in the empty quad, the hallucinating edging on even more. It’s like Zayn was never really here at all.

 

That was quite possibly the greatness orgasm he’s never felt in his life. He hasn't been touched like that in quite a few months. He must be tripping _really fucking hard_. It’s barely been an hour. Time to go home a relax.

 

He walks back into the building to go to his locker to get the Enchiridion he borrowed from Liam that he needed to return before he goes home. He read the entire book yesterday and there was something he found in it Liam _really_ needed to see about the narcissus marsh in their town. How it got there. What it actually is and where it really leads to. _Who put it there_.

 

He left a note on the cover for Liam to read, indicating which part he needs to flip too so he can just leave it in Liam’s locker where he’ll find it when he comes to school today.

 

As he goes to Liam’s locker, he stops when he sees Liam down the hall with Sophia at his locker already, here way earlier than normal. Harry guesses him and Zayn might’ve come together. Which is good. Harry can just show him now. But… what’s he doing with _Sophia?_

 

They don't look very happy to be talking to each other but whatever they're discussing, it looks pretty serious. When Harry comes up to them, they immediately stop talking. She glares at Harry then gives Liam a strange look before she finally goes off without a word.

 

“Um… what was that?”

 

Liam rubs over his face tiredly.

 

“You know what? Nevermind, I don't even care. I need to show you something freaky.” Harry moves onto more important matters, like with the Enchiridion, flipping it open to the section about the narcissus marsh.

 

“So you know the bottomless, underwater waterfall known as the narcissus marsh right?" He starts as he flips through the pages. Liam sighs as he nods, leaning back against his locker.

 

“Well, this book explains exactly why they call it that. There’s a _Vanitas_ in here of what it looked like a thousand years ago.”

 

“What’s a _“Vanitas”?”_

 

“It’s a still-life painting,” Harry explains until he finds the painting again along with the page written about Narcissus.

 

“This is supposed to be _him_ ,” Harry shows Liam the painting of Narcissus himself staring into his reflection admiringly in the water as he lays on his belly with the sun beating down on his glistening skin. The painting was very detailed.

 

Liam barely looks at it as he continues to rub his face like he’s trying to wake himself up. He looks exhausted.

 

“Okay?” He shrugs. Harry squints at him.

 

“Does he not look a little familiar to you? Maybe even _more_ than a little familiar?”

 

Liam looks at the painting blankly.

 

“Harry, it’s a drawing. It probably resembles a lot of people. This guy isn’t even real, this is _mythology_.”

 

Harry stops Liam from walking away.

 

“Liam you’re not _blind_. This is fucking ZAYN!”

 

Liam laughs, shaking his head.

 

“That looks nothing like Zayn. His skin isn’t even the right _complexion_.”

 

“Okay maybe he’s kind of tan but he is in the sun after all. And this is his exact FACE! He’s got black wavy hair and the same jawline and the same eyes, EVERYTHING! It even looks like there might be some kind of tattoo on his arm here. I looked really close. It's in some foreign language-”

 

“So what if they look alike? What’s your point?” Liam cuts him off.

 

“My POINT is this isn’t a fucking coincidence. _Nothing_ is ever a coincidence in this town. According to this, Narcissus was a _17-year-old boy_ who lived in this part of the country a thousand years ago. Everyone was in love with him cause he was so pretty to look at but he rejected everyone, even sexuality.”

 

“What do you mean he rejected sexuality?”

 

“I mean sexuality wasn’t even a thing for him. He was _that_ unimpressed by everyone around him. He rejected it so much, he didn't even look at his _own face_."

 

Liam nods along so Harry continues.

 

"So, everyone wanted his affection but it was impossible. He didn’t love ANYONE. He didn’t _hate_ them but, he didn’t seem to give a single fuck about anyone. This says he literally spent his entire life just sitting around tanning in the sun all day. He stared at the sun so much he was almost blinded by it. Anyone who approached him was rejected. He just casually dismissed anyone who professed their love for him, breaking their hearts so badly, people actually _died_  of broken hearts just from being rejected. Even though it wasn't intentional, he still angered some gods cause they thought that attitude towards everyone just made him an asshole that deserved to be punished. He was punished for rejecting everyone and staring at the  _sun_ cause it was like the highest form of arrogance, _"_

 

"How is staring at the sun arrogant?" Liam squints. Harry gestures to a sentence captioned under the painting.

 

 _"This_ is why. " _F_ _lagellum dei,"_ it means "Scourge of God" in Latin. That basically means punishment for daring to look God in the face. Like  _you're_ looking down on  _God._ That's how badass this fucking kid was. So after all that shit, he was cursed by the Gods."

 

"What does this have to do with Zayn?" 

 

Harry waves Liam off,

 

"Just let me finish!"

 

Liam runs his hand through his hair distractedly as he goes to sit down at a bench. Harry follows, sitting down next to him.

 

"So they cursed him and turned his vanity against him. Vanity back then didn’t mean narcissism. It meant _emptiness_. These old, still-life paintings are called “ _Vanitas”_ because they depict vanity, vanity meaning emptiness in being still. Overtime, narcissism and vanity just became synonymous because of HIM. This says they turned his vanity on himself and made him reflect on the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death. _Forever_.”

 

“Harry speak ENGLISH! I don’t know what the hell you’re even saying right now I’m not a one of those _shitting-big-confusing-words-out-of-my-ass-to-show-how-fucking-smart-am-I-junkie_ like you and Zayn.”

 

Harry runs his hand through his hair in frustration cause Liam isn't even _trying_ to listen.

 

“These aren't my fucking words Liam, this is what the book says! It means they made him stare at himself in this marsh until he died! His reflection in the water was like a still-life painting. That's why the water on top doesn't move! It was just an empty image. He rejected sexuality so much he didn’t even care to look at _himself_ before so the minute he saw his own "beautiful" face, he fell in love with the picture in the water, cursed to never see anything else but himself ever again. Narcissism and vanity became the "fixation with one's own appearance" after that. But that's not even the end of it yet.”

 

Harry points to the painting of him staring at his reflection in the water, at the reflection itself.

 

“Eventually, he fell into this marsh after trying to obtain his reflection right here and everyone just thought he drowned in his vanity but he didn’t drown at all! The curse turned the marsh into a _Vanitas_. An empty, bottomless pit. If you go far enough into it, you’ll end up in _“tartarus sub terra”_ which literally translates to _“hell under the earth”_ in latin. A.K.A. the UNDERWORLD. Also known as HELL and INFERNO and-”

 

“I get it! There are a thousand ways to say hell!” Liam interrupts. Harry nods, going on.

 

“Okay, so this is the freaky part. The curse opened a gateway to _hell on earth_ in the marsh that he fell into and evil shit has been able to just come and go through it ever since. That’s why this land is a meeting ground for a “devil”. There’s a fucking portal _this kid’s reflection opened a thousand years ago_ and it’s put Manningtree at the literal epicentre of HELL! It wasn't just him that got cursed.  _Manningtree_ got cursed and it wasn’t 400 years ago but actually a thousand years ago! MORE freaky part, there’s a prophecy here that says Narcissus would leave the underworld after he spent a thousand years there. It doesn’t say what exactly he did down there cause this isn't from his perspective but eventually he’d make a deal with the devil and get out in the first ever documented record of _demonic transference._ It’s not always the demon being transferred in. It can be getting the demon’s transferred out as well. He had to go through demonic transference 7 times in a row until he was allowed to be back on Earth somewhere which sounds strikingly similar to 7 DEADLY SINS. This 400-year-old book prophesied that. The time frame he would’ve been back on Earth's surface is exactly _9 months before Zayn’s birthday almost 18 years ago to this day.”_

 

“So Zayn is a thousand years old?” Liam deadpans.

 

“Obviously _not_ but it’s GLARINGLY OBVIOUS that he and Narcissus are connected in some kind of way! You can’t tell me that after reading all this and seeing the time frame and seeing what he LOOKS like isn’t a bit odd? What happened to you asking me “what don’t I believe at this point?” Especially now that the exact same fucking this has happened to Zayn, _in the same town, at the same age, with the same demons, with the same FACE?_ Narcissus’s worst demon was in his reflection. Zayn has had a slight obsession with his appearance his entire life. Liam… time is a flat circle on an infinite loop right now.”

 

_‘The other side of a loop is a loop’_

 

Lux’s voice plays in his head. _Zayn’s_ voice.

 

Liam’s mind caves. It’s feeling like it’s squeezing so tight that it just falls in.

 

There’s so much going on in his body at once and he’s about to explode from the confined walls of it closing in on him and it’s not even 7 o’clock in the morning yet. He's already dealing with too much with Zayn and Sophia as it is, he didn't need this shot at him too. Harry closes the book when he sees Liam’s expression. Like he’s about to break down and cry.

 

“Oh God, I’m so sorry this is a lot to spring on you at once-” Harry

 

“No, it’s not you… it’s just _Zayn_ ,” Liam crumbles as he covers his face with his hands before the tears can start rolling.

 

Harry goes to wrap his arms around his shoulders, feeling like he might start crying again too cause he knows this feeling is ripping Liam up inside too.

 

“It’s okay.” Harry murmurs. Liam stands up suddenly, wiping his face off.

 

“No! It’s not okay! I don’t even know where Zayn is right now cause I can’t see anything or feel anything and now this stupid past life bullshit has been doing my head in since yesterday evening as it is and everything was almost _perfect_ for a split second on that fucking hill… it was like my amnesia triggered and I’d forgotten how fucked up our lives have been. Yesterday, we were just together and happy. But that was an eternity ago already cause now we’ve walked into another day of more piss and shit with more people _disappearing_ or  _dying_ in hospitals and Zayn's completely _gone_ and now I'm stuck with Sophia _against_ my will again and you just showed me a THOUSAND YEAR OLD PICTURE OF FUCKING ZAYN and I'm just so… _tired_. As soon as it seems like it's gonna maybe get better, some other shit happens 100 times worse and it restarts all over again, I'm sick of it!”

 

Harry is starting to regret getting high before he came to school because Liam is hyperventilating in front in front of him and his stress level is radiating out all over him like a thick black cloud outlining his body in Harry’s tripping eyes. He can’t go home and leave Liam like this right now.

 

He stands up and makes Liam sit down on the bench.

 

“Okay, just _breathe_. Don’t panic,”

 

Liam closes his eyes and nods as Harry gets him to lay down on the bench on his back before he actually starts having a panic attack. But Liam’s heart levels out on its own as his body constricts, feeling the disassociating creeping up in his mind until it squeezes tight and he pops right out. Suddenly, he can’t feel anything at all anymore.

 

He’s left all his stress and anxiety in his body as he drifts away. And Harry has officially reached the beginning of a full-on acid trip as everything around him fades into a void, watching Liam leave his body as he’s lying on the bench.

 

“ _Whoa_ …” Harry’s eyes go wide as he looks at the dark cloud staying around Liam’s body while a lighter, much more ghostly image of Liam drifts above him slowly. He feels like he’s watching him… _die_. But he knows he’s not because his body is still breathing on the bench.

 

Harry can’t look at anything else but the mirage of Liam, everything else in the hall having faded away into blank space around them. His body looks asleep on the bench but this mirage Harry is staring at is wide awake and watching himself lay on the bench.

 

“ _Wicked_ …” Harry murmurs as he smiles.

 

“How do you feel?” He doesn’t know why he even asks. The mirage shrugs.

 

 _“I feel like I’m nothing. Like I’m dead.”_ The mirage actually answers Harry.

 

His voice sounds like a faint echo in the void. Cause that’s where Harry’s mind is right now. There’s nothing around them but empty space. Not even colour.

 

“Don’t say that, we’re still alive. Maybe a bit _fucked up_ but we’re still alive.”

 

Liam’s ghostly mirage looks away from his body at Harry with wide eyes, turning on his back as he floats.

 

 _“What did you say?”_ He asks.

 

“I said we’re still alive.” Harry snorts as he looks down a little, rubbing his neck,

 

“Fucked up _beyond_ repair, but-”

 

 _“You can hear me?!”_ Liam’s mirage sits up straight as he floats upright, his legs dangling in front of him like Peter Pan. He looks like he's swimming in the air.

 

Harry looks at him and nods slowly.

 

“Of course I can hear you… I’m right in front of you.”

 

 _“Harry,”_ His mouth opens as he gapes in shock.

 

 _“You can see me?”_ he waves his hand in front of Harry’s eyes. Harry can see right through his fingers.

 

“Well… you’re not _completely_ invisible… maybe a bit transparent but-”

 

 _“OH MY GOD!”_ Liam’s mirage smiles into his wide grin that takes up half face. Harry laughs.

 

“I’m like really fucked up right now so you kind of look like a ghost to me but me and Zayn ingested a pretty _lethal_ amount of hallucinogens like an hour or so ago so I’m gonna be seeing crazy shit for the next 12 hours. Don’t be freaked out. I’m used to it”

 

Liam’s mirage frowns.

 

_“An hour ago? You saw Zayn earlier?”_

 

Harry shrugs.

 

“I dunno… he kind of disappeared right before my eyes so who really knows,”

 

_“I can’t believe you’re telling ME not to be freaked out. This is normal for me. You usually can’t see me,”_

 

Harry looks around the emptiness they’re sitting in. Well… Harry’s sitting. Liam is floating.

 

“So this ghost Liam comes out of your body often?”

 

_“I’m not a ghost Haz. I’ve been disassociating like this my entire life. I thought I was just fucking mental but you can SEE me!”_

 

The likelihood that Harry is not hallucinating right now is beginning to dawn on him as he looks behind him, down the hall. It looks like everything is normal as people have started to walk by now but then he looks at Liam and he’s a ghost in a void that’s overlapping the school around them. 

 

Liam always said he feels like he leaves his body and watches himself from the outside. Harry just didn’t realise he meant that _literally_. He shrugs simply, not freaked out about seeing Liam outside of his body in the least bit. Harry's at a stage in his life right now where literally, _nothing_ shocks him anymore. In fact, Liam isn’t looking so transparent anymore as Harry’s high continues until he’s having his own out of body experience.

 

“I think we’re on an astral plane right now.” He shrugs casually. Liam tilts his head a little.

 

“What’s that?” His voice isn’t so far away anymore.

 

Harry leans back a little.

 

“It’s the place I go when I’m high like right now. That’s why it’s called a “high”. You’re taken into another world. “Astral” is the non-physical part of you. The “plane” is the world you’re in.”

 

Liam nods as if he’s impressed.

 

“That’s really interesting. Tell me something else.”

 

"Well, everyone experiences it differently. I don't think Zayn does at all. He kinda gets the opposite. He says it feels like he's weighed down on and falling deeper into his body."

 

When Liam is like this, it's always different depending on the moment. Right now, he can’t feel anything but quiet. He’s not always numb. Feeling numb didn’t feel good. It only meant he hasn’t left completely. Feeling nothing but stillness and quiet was relaxing though. He can’t hear his horrible thoughts but he can still hear his heart beating and Harry's voice talking. He can’t smell anything in the air cause there was no air. But he can always see. Even when he was almost blind. The only thing he could usually see was everything in his general vicinity. The edges around it kind of gradually disappeared. He was always too scared to drift too far away because the further he disassociates, the less he can see and he knows he’ll get lost.

 

Harry continues to tell him things about this mysterious world he never knew he could float into.

 

“So in philosophy, there’s this thing Plato and Aristotle wrote about called _aether_. It’s believed by many to be the fifth element that comes after water, earth, fire and air but it's not physical like the other 4 elements. It’s a  _nonmaterial_ that stars are made of that's supposedly crushed up and embedded in our bones and psyche. In the most basic understanding, it’s what our souls are supposed to be made of and it’s probably what’s been leaving your body. Cause the fifth element of _aether_ doesn’t exist in a material world like our bodies do. It’s on a level that’s _dense_ , almost like space but, just a little more _liberated_ like air but not quite air itself. An astral plane is that next level outside of the material world where _aether_ is. Where we are right now.”

 

Liam looks up above him as he stares into it. Astral planes sure were peaceful.

 

“So… we’re not in space?”

 

Harry shake his head.

 

“No… more like in _between_ space. If this is where you go when you’re disassociating then you don’t even need to ever try drugs. You’re already there.”

 

Liam shakes his head as he sighs, floating on his back again and looking upwards at the void they’re in. Harry’s psychedelic drabble about their souls or whatever usually leaves him feeling like he can’t understand English. But everything Harry just said actually registers smoothly, coasting over him like a nice breeze. He liked chilling in this world. He’s actually feeling way calmer now so he’d rather be back in his body again cause the more of himself he let's go of, the more of himself he feels drifting into the void and if he goes too far, he might not be able to come back. That’s what happened to Geoff Payne.

 

Liam comes back down and opens his eyes again, feeling a little less stressed now. But still like everything is just _wrong_ right now. He feels like he's looking at everything through a distorted mirror.

 

There are a few people in the hall, staring at them as they walk to class like their looking at a circus act in the hall. Not the fun kind of circus act. The weird kind.

 

He sits up on the bench and looks at Harry sitting on the other end. Harry smiles when his eyes refocus.

 

“Back already?”

 

Liam nods.

 

"Are you?"

 

Harry shakes his head as he eyes dart a little.

 

"I'm a little in and out."

 

“I knew you were an alien but I didn’t know you could actually travel into _space_.”

 

Harry shrugs.

 

“Well, so can you so I guess that makes you a demonic alien.”

 

The smiles wipes off Liam’s face when he’s reminded of this demon crap.

 

“God I HATE this,” He groans as he holds his head between his hands.

 

“You hate what?”

 

“I was _freaking out_ because I can’t see anything. I still can’t see... _shit,_ ”

 

“What are you talking about?” Harry squints.

 

“And why were you talking to Soph?”

 

“Because she showed up at my house this morning.” Liam mutters. Harry nods slowly.

 

“Okay…”

 

“Zayn was there too and they got into a huge screaming match over me and she pretty much told him to go to hell.” He rubs over his face tiredly.

 

“So what's new there?”

 

“I haven't seen or heard from him since! I keep trying to see where he is, like with clairvoyance but… it's like something’s blocking any kind of connection I had to him… I think he's avoiding me or something.”

 

“Why would he be avoiding you?” Harry’s still seeing that dark energy floating around Liam’s head right now, outlining his whole body.

 

“We had sex last night… I think? No I _know_ we did I'm just so messed up right now, I might as well be on acid too.” he sighs, frustrated with his memory lapsing. Harry gapes at Liam.

 

“You had sex as in… demon-sex? Like, with Lux? Or _sex_ sex?” Harry puts a different emphasis on his eyebrows with each use of the word. Liam runs his hands through his hair, elbows on his knees.

 

“Cause I can guarantee you if Zayn had sex with you last night, he definitely wouldn’t avoid you the next day. He’d be rubbing it in everyone’s faces like the possessive boyfriend he's always been destined to be with you.”

 

“Well, I don’t understand why I can’t see him! We confessed how we felt about each other and we went home together and it was the most amazing day of my fucking life Harry. It felt like we were the only people in the entire world and I know we were together for a good few hours but… it felt like only 1 minute. And now when I try to see where he is, I can’t see anything. This is worse than amnesia. Something... _weird_ happened to me last night.” he closes his eyes then, pinching the bridge of his nose.

 

“Wait so what’s the last thing you actually remember?” Harry squints at the glowing darkness emitting from Liam.

 

He reaches out to touch it and some of it pulls away from Liam like it repels Harry’s skin. His eyebrows rise as he does it again, more of it pushing away from Liam.

 

Liam tilts his head away from Harry cause he keeps poking his face, glowering at the ground.

 

He doesn’t yell at Harry for poking him cause he knows he’s still on his astral plane or wherever the fuck Harry’s mind takes him when he's high. And he’s too busy trying to figure out what the fuck happened between last night and this morning to dwell on Harry right now.

 

“That’s the weird thing about it. With amnesia, I just can’t picture anything. With this, I actually _blacked out_ for a while. Like the blackness just took over everything I was doing… I couldn’t _control_ it. In the moment, it felt normal but now when I try to think about it, it’s like I’m looking at someone else’s memories. We had sex but… it wasn’t _me_. Like physically it was me but I wasn't the one in charge of anything. Then right after Lux and Zayn got into a fight about... _something_ I can’t fucking remember, then I finally woke feeling completely on edge cause Zayn and Sophia were cursing each other out downstairs at 5 in the morning and then Zayn stormed from my house right after without a word and now when I try to see where he is, there’s this huge brick wall. That's everything I remember.”

 

Liam’s face crumbles as he covers his eyes. This was just the nightmare he couldn’t wake up from. This wasn’t his dissociative amnesia acting up. Whatever happened to him last night when he blacked out, it took over half his memory until he woke up to Zayn leaving his house. And he knows this dark pit in his gut is probably why.

 

“I don’t think he’s keeping anything from me… I just can’t remember what he even said! I can’t remember us talking about what was gonna happen today aside from the portal opening. He wasn't supposed to leave until tonight and usually, I can tell where he is, even if it's Lux. Why would he just LEAVE?”

 

Liam can’t stand the black hole he sees when he tries to remember what happened last night. Or the black hole he sees when he tries to see where Zayn is. Something is blocking his sight.

 

Harry kneels in front of Liam after he's done, pushing his hands through Liam’s hair, pushing the dark cloud away. It falls out of his hair and Harry watches it slide off his fingers. Liam bats his hands away.

 

“Can you please stop being weird for just a moment?”

 

“Take a deep breath for me,” Harry says calmly, moving his hands to Liam’s shoulders, wiping more off him.

 

Liam closes his eyes, doing as Harry says and taking a deep breath.

 

“Okay now we--”

 

“Harry, I’m in a really unstable place right now. I don't think I can handle a lecture about how my memory loss is me reacting to stress and the universe is gonna balance it all out. I'm gonna lose it.”

 

“Li,” Harry smiles a little “I was gonna say we’re going to Zayn's house after school. I know he’s just went home, trust me. I told you I saw him earlier. When he left your house, he came here and talked to me and he got really high so he went home. He said he told you. The portal doesn't open until tonight. You can give him a proper kiss goodbye and wait until he comes back later. If you dwell on your amnesia for too long, you’re gonna work yourself into submission and space out. Zayn is _fine_. He’s at home feeling his brain melt into the sun like what mine is currently doing.”

 

Liam squints at Harry’s wide pupils.

 

“How long are you gonna be high?”

 

Harry makes a face at him.

 

“I’m _trying_ to get you to let go of the tension your building up inside you right now. Your energy is all out of whack, dark and clouded instead of shiny and glowing like how it’s supposed to be. That’s probably what’s blocking your third eye from seeing anything, this shit is all over you,”

 

Harry brushes it off some more but there’s too much. Liam needs to take Harry’s energy cleanse. It’s this special bathing method he came up with after he got plumbing in his attic.

 

“Harry I’m not taking that weird hippie bath.” Liam deadpans. Harry shrugs.

 

“Okay well, you need to just relax then. The world isn’t collapsing on us just yet. Remember we’re all still alive. Let’s focus on that, yeah?”

 

Liam nods. Even though Harry can get annoying when he’s high, he’s still grateful for his positivity. It always talks him off the edge of his cliff.

 

Harry sits next to Liam in the now empty hall then as everyone else has gone to class, riding out his high leisurely as he smiles at the wall that smiles back at him. Liam sulks silently, still trying to rack his brain for _something_. But there’s nothing there. He wishes this stupid pit in his stomach would just go away.

 

“I don't know why you're so worked up about Zayn and _Sophia_. Since when has she ever deterred him before?” Harry snorts. Liam shakes his head as he covers his face again.

 

Waking up to Zayn and Sophia fighting was annoying enough as it is but it was more than just them arguing. Zayn and Lux were arguing last night too. In his bathroom. And it was  _intense._

 

The mirror in his bathroom was shattered completely and there was blood-drenched all over towels stuffed deep in the trash on the curb. It was so potent, the smell of it jammed it’s fingers in Liam’s nose and punched out all over smells as soon as he stepped outside. Something obviously happened last night while he was asleep or that he just blacked out during and he knows it was _bad_. He remembers seeing Zayn talking to his reflection in his room yesterday. Obviously, that’s how he talks to Lux cause Liam’s actually seen it move without Zayn several times since he was sacrificed, which was honestly _terrifying_ to see. Whatever they were fighting about… it was driving him insane cause he’s completely in the dark. He feels blind again. _Stone-blind._

 

“You wanna go back?”

 

Liam shakes his head. Disassociating wasn’t gonna make any of his problems go away. There was only one way he could right now, and he knows he’s gonna regret it but he’s getting pretty fucking desperate and grasping at the straws of his mind wasn’t getting him anywhere. He needed outside help in the only place he could get it at this point.

 

“Harry…” Liam starts hesitantly. He hates to ask him this.

 

“Yeah?” He utters dazedly.

 

Liam squeezes his eyes closed and sighs.

 

“Have you still got that monkey's paw?”

 

Harry nods.

 

“How many wishes are left?”

 

  
*

 

***Last night***

  
Not even 3 hours after Liam has fucked him into a coma, a sharp pain in his gut wakes Zayn up. He gasps as his eyes spring open, looking up at Liam’s serene face in front of him. He watches him sleep for a moment, growing worried as he thinks about how Liam blacked out _twice_ right before his eyes.

 

He briefly wonders if there's a way to reverse a demon bite. If Liam blacks out when he’s aroused, he couldn't imagine what would happen when he was angry… or hungry which is arguably much worse than anger.

 

He might not be a full demon but he’s still got that darkness in his body and it’s conscious with a mind of it's own. Even if it’s dormant now, he obviously has no idea how to control it when it decides to activate. When that darkness takes over, it controls _him_ instead of him controlling _it_. Lux says that’s the worst kind of demon. The kind that can’t control themselves.

The pain shoots down Zayn's spine when he moves a little, making him suck in his breath harshly.

 

 _“Christ,”_ he mumbles weakly as he holds his back feeling like something is dying inside him.

 

He’s already got enough shit to deal with, with his demons alone and now he’s got Liam dragged into it. That was what he was trying to avoid.

 

Slowly, he carefully scoots off of Liam, cautious to make sure he doesn't wake up. Liam stirs in his sleep and grabs at Zayn’s pillow, hugging it as it replaces the body he was holding. Once he's sure he's fine, Zayn gets out of bed and puts on pants to go to the bathroom, to examine his neck.

 

He didn't know why his neck was suddenly broken again or why his insides currently feel like he’s pulled every muscle in his body at once. If Liam knocked his spine back out of place or something… he was going to kill him.

 

He closes the door for a moment, letting his eyes go black briefly as his pupil dilates. The marks all clear up, healing over and the pain in his body soothes away when he lets the darkness course through his body. He always has to be careful not to let it consume him, even if it feels really good when it does.

 

When he looks at his reflection, it lurches at him.

 

Zayn falls back on the ground in terror as it almost looks like it might _actually_ leap out of the glass for a split second. Lux hits his fists against the glass on the other side as he glares at Zayn with daggers in his eyes. It doesn’t break. But it cracks just a little.

 

 _‘Conteram speculum!’_ he hisses in Latin in Zayn’s head, ordering him to break the glass.

 

 _“No!”_ Zayn whispers back, watching him hit his fists again the mirror. But he can’t get out unless Zayn lets him.

 

He figured out something a few weeks ago about how to stop Lux from taking over his body whenever he wants. As long as his reflection is around, Zayn can purge him into it. But the catch about that is as long as he keeps Lux in the mirror, he can’t leave it, like they’re chained to each other. The dark pit is still in his chest. So he can’t purge Lux out of his body _totally_ but, he knows he can if he finds the right place to do it. That place is in Lust somewhere.

 

 _“Let me **OUT**!”_ He growls out loud. Zayn stands back up and shushes him.

 

 _“What the fuck is wrong with you?”_ Zayn whispers, looking at the door to make sure Liam doesn’t wake up.

 

_“You’re gonna wake him up!”_

 

_“YOU’RE what’s fucking wrong with me! You’re going to get us KILLED! I will break your neck in HALF before I let you go through that portal again.”_

 

Zayn closes his eyes as he sighs. He tried not to fall asleep but it was kind of impossible. Now Lux has seen everything in his mind and he knows everything.

 

_“Yeah, I know what you’ve been fucking doing. You think you're so sneaky and clever trying to purge me into the last level of hell but you can’t keep secrets from me when you’re sleeping. Going through Cocytus will only lead you straight to IRA! We will both feel his rage severely if you get caught.”_

 

Lux turns around as he groans.

 

 _“FUCK!”_  It's muffled as he screams it into his hands taking them over his face, pacing around in the confined space of the mirror.

 

“What are you even talking about? I didn’t go to _Cocytus_ , I went to _Lust_.”

 

Lux shakes his head as he continues to pace.

 

 _“That portal you keep going in doesn’t lead to Lust. You were in COCYTUS. You opened a gateway to the very worst pits of HELL. You are so fucking ignorant, I told you there’s already a gateway to Lust waiting for you to jump back through it. In the MARSH! But you don’t **LISTEN**!”_ he growls as his fist hits the other side of the mirror again, making it crack just a little more from the other side this time.

 

Zayn winces at the jolt in his knuckles, watching his hand starting to bruise from Lux punching the mirror. He can still hurt Zayn if he inflicts damage to himself.

 

There's anger and fear weighing down on his faded grey eyes. He was rarely ever serious. He actually looks _genuinely_ frightened.

 

“What exactly is Ira?” Zayn sighs. He taps his temple briefly before Lux says anything to indicate for him to say it in his head so they’re voices don’t wake up Liam.

 

_‘MY OLDER SIBLING! Also known as your WRATH. You know, one of the other 6 demons you have lurking around in hell?’_

 

“You’re scared of your own sibling?”

 

_‘And you should be too! If your wrath sees you, you’re gonna wish you COULD die. If you think your reflection is a pain, you have no idea what’s in store for you if you run into your HEART. Cause that's where Ira came from. Your BLACK heart. That's why you got cursed and that is where your wrath sprang from! He HATED Narcissus for purging him. Cause Ira is red-faced resentment and scorn. He’s the closest thing to the devil your dumbass is ever gonna fucking see. If he ever finds us, he will not stop until he has your HEART back, on a steak! If you’re thinking about trying to go through that fucking portal again-’_

 

“You’re going back to hell whether you like it or not.” Zayn rolls his eyes. Lux freezes in the mirror as he mouth pops open in utter disbelief. He holds perfectly still for probably 5 long seconds and he actually looks like just a reflection again. Zayn's eye dart to the side awkwardly.

 

"Umm... can I help you with something?"

 

 _‘Are you actually... trying to kill yourself?'_ Lux asks him slowly. Zayn quirks his eyebrows at him in confusion.

 

 

"No-"

 

 _'Well then are you fucking **DEAF?!"**_ His face twists from slightly concerned to furious as he lurches at the glass again. Zayn doesn't flinch this time, even though his knuckles are getting pretty bruised. Almost black.

 

"Why are you acting like you're so shocked I'm taking you back to hell?"

 

_'Because you’re not LISTENING to me! Every time you go through that bloody portal, you’re risking both of us being tortured in Cocytus forever! There's already a portal for you in the MARSH! Are you really that fucking stupid?’_

 

“Yeah I am. You keep trying to lure me to that marsh and I’m not falling for it. You’re going wherever the fuck I decide to put you.”

 

Lux pauses briefly again as his hard expression falls, tilting his head sideways in fascination as something flashing in Zayn’s mind catches his attention. His mouth pops open as he smiles slightly.

 

“Oh… now _that’s_ interesting. Finally found your logic here.” He smirks out loud.

 

“So _that’s_ why you’re suddenly so desperate to get me down there.”

 

Zayn shakes his head to himself as he closes his eyes.

 

“You think Liam likes me do you?”

 

Zayn looks at his wide grin, glaring at Lux.

 

“That’s really funny cause _I think he likes me too.”_

 

“You tried to kill him.”

 

Lux rolls his eyes.

 

“I wasn’t gonna kill him. Don't insult me. If I ever try to kill someone, they'd be _dead_. I know how to control my powers, unlike you. I was gonna give him the greatest orgasm of his life until you took over and fucking bit him so congratulations. You’ve damned your boyfriend to hell for nothing.”

 

“Why would he like you? As far as he’s concerned, you’re still an evil creature from hell.”

 

“Well, I could’ve told him who I _really_ am but we were having so much fun, I didn’t even need too. Although I’m sure after looking me in the eye for 1 or 2 very gay hours he’s probably figured it out a little bit on his own.”

 

“He doesn’t like you.”

 

“But he really wanted to _kiss_ me didn’t he?” Lux wiggles his eyebrows.

 

This is a nerve no one should ever hit in Zayn. His eyes darken as the pit in his chest heats up.

 

“He's never gonna see you as anything but a fucking _demon_. Obviously, he looks at you and he sees me. Sorry, that confuses you but he’s _mine_. This isn't _our_ boyfriend just like this isn't  _our_ body. Do you think he’ll still like you after he finds out about all the people you’ve _killed?_ You’ve already spread a disease around as it is.”

 

Lux laughs at that, blowing on the mirror for a moment so it fogs and beginning to draw a smiley face in it.

 

“You seem to forget I wasn’t _alone_ when I did those things cause this is _OUR body,_ babe. So I wouldn’t be banking on that as my only defence for why he shouldn’t like me. I’ve never killed a human before in my life until I got here and that’s your fucking fault so the next time you wanna blame the murders of your FRIENDS on me, take a look in the mirror. He’s in love with your face so guess what that means?”

 

He draws X's for the eyes.

 

Zayn shakes his head, wishing there was a way for him to reach into the mirror and strangle him. But he can’t touch Lux. Not physically anyway.

 

“He doesn’t love you! You are not _me_. You are nothing but a _reflection_. Nothing you say or do will ever mean ANYTHING because, in reality, _you are nothing_. You'll always be nothing to me and you will always be nothing to Liam. I can assure you, I have always hated you. _Always_. So I hope you finally meeting me face to face was worth the wait so you know just how much I’m always gonna hate you with every fibre of my being in every life. And no matter how hard you wish to be something else, that's all you’ll ever be to me. Nothing.”

 

Lux’s grey eyes glaze over for a moment. Zayn almost feels bad for saying that to him but whatever moment of hurt he might’ve inflicted into his reflection is quickly buried as his eyes darken.

 

“And _you_ will always be a cursed narcissist. You can hate your reflection until you _bleed_ but you will never get away from me. The only place you’ll ever see is hell because your soul is damned. And the only reason Liam likes you at all is because you have the genes of a greek god and for your permanent aroma of narcissus that reminds him of roses when he doesn’t even realise that is the smell of _vanity_ that will always stain your skin. Because it echos in your hollow, _empty,_ corporeal body. Your vanity makes you nothing but an shell of a person. So you keep hating yourself. Hate me until you fucking die _again_. You'll keep running from your demons for a thousand lifetimes but I'm always gonna be right there every time you look at yourself until you go back to hell where you belong. Cause that is where your final destination will always be, _Narcissus_.”

 

Zayn looks away from the mirror, trying to pull away, burying Lux inside him so the chain to the mirror breaks, by soon after he does, the scars on his neck come back and the ache in his body pulses. He suddenly realises it's _Lux_ doing this to him. Zayn gasps in pain, shoving Lux back into the reflection before his neck feels like it’s actually going to snap in half again.

 

“What's wrong with you!? Do you enjoy being in PAIN?!”

 

_‘You’re NOT going back through that portal. If we have to stand here and stare at each other for the rest of eternity then I’ll take that. I’d rather die than go to Cocytus. If you want me to stop your neck from breaking, go back to the narcissus marsh. Lust is just on the other side. It’s the only way you’ll get there and if you even take ONE step towards that portal in your room or even blink in its direction, I WILL break every fucking bone in your body.’_

 

“Maybe I should just get an exorcist.”

 

Lux laughs briefly.

 

_‘I’m sorry but you definitely won't survive that babe. You won't survive ANY of this. If you get me out and back in Lust, your body will have to sustain everything it's been through and it will catch back up with you before you can even blink. If getting us struck by fucking LIGHTENING and having your friends run us over with 5,000 pounds of speeding hunks of METAL doesn’t kill you, I can assure you, you won’t survive ripping me out of you again. He didn't before and you won't now. And you can't just go galloping around in any random part of hell cause you fucking feel like it! You're so scared I'm gonna steal your boyfriend that you’ll risk being stuck in hell for all of eternity when I don’t even want him. Like you said, he only likes me because I look like you. I don't want either of you.’_

 

“This isn’t about just Liam being safe. Staying in hell to ensure this beast living inside me won’t continue to KILL people is reason enough for me to go there because I’m NOT a narcissist. I actually care about the lives of other human beings. Innocent people are being killed because of me and it does make me want to fucking kill myself. Just because I’m cursed doesn't mean I have to bring down this whole town with me. You're going home _however you get there_  and that's the last of it. If I die getting you there then that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.” Zayn says quietly.

 

Lux closes his eyes as he takes a deep breath and puts his hands on the mirror.

 

 _‘Zayn, just listen to me. PLEASE.'_ He starts with forced calmness as he looks at Zayn.

 

' _Where I came from is on the other side of that marsh. That is the ONLY way to get there. Ira will unleash his fury on us if we run into him in Cocytus. You will never die in hell. But you can be tortured forever. Just take us into the marsh. I know deep water scares you. But I can swim to the through it! We seriously don’t have to go through COCYTUS! I never leave Lust for a reason.”_

 

“I don’t swim. I think it’s just naturally against my nature to go anywhere near somewhere I’ve died before. In fact, that entire marshes existence is probably why I’ve never been able to swim.” Zayn shrugs simply.

 

“So you’re still going to try to that death portal after everything I just told you?”

 

Zayn hesitates but nods slowly.

 

 **“You _idiot!”_** their voices intertwine, loud as Lux growls angrily. His pupil dilates over his entire eye as he's sent into a frenzied _attack_ mode.

 

He lurches forward again at the glasses, hitting the X's he drew that Zayn now realises are _targets_ for where he's been trying to find where the weak points are. Zayn jolts as he backs away slowly but he can't look away from his reflection. Lux hulk smashes his fists into the mirror one last time and it finally shatters.

 

He's instantly set loose in Zayn’s body. He keeps his promise of breaking every one of his bones. Well, he tries to anyways.

 

Zayn’s insides twist around like a corkscrew spinning out of control throughout him. He bends backwards as his limbs turn into unnatural positions and he levitates off the ground as if this is some fucked up scene from the actual Exorcist, banging him against the wall repeatedly.

 

 _“Luxuria… please stop,”_ he winces, squeezing his eyes as he restrains the urge to scream in anguish.

 

**“HE’LL KILL US BOTH IF YOU GO BACK THERE ZAYN-”**

 

Zayn looks at a glass shard on the floor and shoves Lux away to it before he can wake up Liam or break his damn back, sending him to throw his temper tantrum without Zayn.

 

He falls hard on the ground then, breathing harshly and hacking blood. He goes to fix his arm that's stayed twisted to its side after he's done coughing up what looks like the bits of a few vital organs keeping his eyes on his reflection as he does so.

 

He sticks a towel lying on the floor in his mouth and counts to 3 before he bites down hard so his brutal grunts are muffled as he breaks his twisted arm again so it goes back into it's natural position. He doesn't want it to stay crooked.

 

 _“Fuck,”_ he hiccups as a sob catches in his throat, choking on his tears. His tolerance for pain has increased 1,000% but he’s still only human physically. There’s only so much pain he can take at once.

 

He holds perfectly still for a moment to listen to Liam's breathing.

 

_Great, he’s awake._

 

Zayn doesn't know how he's gonna explain Liam's broken mirror. Not that he even notices his mirror ever.

 

After about 20 minutes of sniffling and struggling to catch his breath, his arm mends itself a little finally. He lets the darkness course through him then until his arm's not broken anymore or anything else inside for that matter. Once his body is back in good health, he sighs and finally gets up off the floor. He cleans up all the blood and glass while keeping one shard of glass with him to ensure that Lux stays in the glass instead of going off in his body again.

 

He weakly goes back to lay with Liam in bed afterwards.

 

_“Zayn-”_

 

_“Shh,”_

 

Zayn pushes his chest back, running his over Liam’s wet cheek.

 

“I’m sorry I woke you.”

 

_“Wh… what’s wrong?”_

 

Everything.

 

 _“It’s okay. Go back to sleep.”_ Zayn kisses him just a little, careful not to put too much pressure so he won’t get a mouthful of blood.

 

Liam wraps his arms around Zayn and inserts himself into the pocket of space around him, clinging to Zayn like he’s afraid he might spontaneously vanish into the air.

 

God, he’s so scared. Zayn’s never felt Liam more scared as their hearts thump against each other. He hates himself for doing this to him. He’s ruined his fucking life. Whatever happens to him by the end doesn’t even matter anymore. He wasn’t dragging Liam to hell with him. Not while his heart was still beating, however, unstable it felt in his chest, surrounded by darkness. He has to fix both of them.

 

 _“I love you,”_ Liam sniffs from under him.

 

Zayn holds him tighter, trying to keep the moment for as long as he could as he keeps his gaze on his reflection in Liam’s mirror, watching Lux with his back to Zayn as he hunches over quietly. He can’t help the tears that fall down his cheeks. They’re not his tears. They’re Lux’s.

 

“Liam sometimes it scares me how much I love you. I love you more than I love _myself_. I want you to just know that you always come first.” The words feel so lost with his lips pressed into Liam’s hair.

 

' _You hate yourself.'_ Lux sniffs.

 

_'And I hate you too,'_

 

Zayn ignores him. He's not lying though.

 

He was planning on telling Liam tomorrow that he was leaving earlier than before but now he realises he can’t leave just yet. Of course, he wanted to get Lux out as soon as possible but… he knows that Lux is telling the truth. There’s pretty much a zero percent chance he'll survive everything that's happened to him after he comes out. He can't save Liam if he dies first. So Liam comes first like he always does.

  
After he gets Liam back to normal and purges Lux back to hell, his body was probably gonna give out before he even makes it to the Earth's surface. Cause that’s what happened to Nars 18 years ago.

 

Narcissus was the exact same age as Zayn when he got cursed. He never saw 18 but he spent a thousand years in hell, purging 7 demons out of different parts of himself. His black heart. His sun bathed skin. His faded, near- _blind_ eyes. And the one he hated the most,  _his reflection_.

 

Maybe this was just how it was always supposed to be and going against the grain is totally pointless. Like… maybe Zayn was always damned for a reason he'll never know. Maybe for no reason at all. But Zayn can’t think like that. He can’t think about himself. Because what happened to him was always gonna happen anyways. But it wasn’t for _Liam_. Before he gets Lux out, he has to get Liam back to the way he’s supposed to be and he wasn’t leaving until he did just that.

 

Zayn tells Liam all that as they lay there. But Liam doesn’t say anything. He knows he’s awake. He can feel him shaking.

 

“We’re still gonna be together after I'm gone, Liam. Cause I know I'm always with you in every life and even when we’re separated, we still find each other. Like, maybe you were actually a sun in a past life and that's why he was so in love with the sun. Cause I’m always gonna love you. There’s never been be a moment where I’m not loving you. Being apart from you for so long... I can't even think about it cause I might-" Zayn hiccups as his throat closes but he doesn't let himself cry, shaking his head out of it

 

"It doesn't even matter. I’m always gonna find you again, yeah? Like we always said we would. We always find each other again no matter where we go.”

 

He can feel their hearts levelling out against each other as he holds Liam into him and he’s suddenly feeling flooded with an overwhelming sense of grief. He’ll never live to be 18. He’ll always be shackled to his reflection throughout every life cause that cursed image will transcend even death itself.

 

He’s not gonna get to go to University and become an English professor or see his little sisters grow up or witness Harry reach nirvana or ever make it out of Manningtree and travel the world with his two best friends and the most overwhelming grievance of all, he’s never gonna get to grow old with Liam. Liam will move on and Zayn will always be stuck at 17. He's always hated to be 17.

 

Deep down, he was always terrified of turning 17 years old cause there was this harrowing cloud hanging over it. He could feel this profound dread about it. People always say right before you die or right before something terrible happens, your body alerts you of the impending doom so you can brace yourself. Turning 17 was always his impending doom. He always thought if he kept saying he was 18, it'd be spoken into existence and he'd make it. But his fate was already set. A millennium ago.

 

Liam still doesn’t say anything at all, holding still next to him now. But the stillness Liam always has made Zayn feel calm. Calm like how the universe or whatever divine potency that decided all this must feel calm. Or if none of that is real, calm like how a void must feel calm. Cause nothing moves in stillness. Not even time. There’s a profound silence in Liam that calms Zayn all the way down and makes him feel like this moment actually is forever. Even if the sleep dragging in Zayn’s eyes threatens to lurch him forward into the morning, he has Liam here and this instant, it feels like forever.

 

 

*

 

 

Lux wakes Zayn up at 5 in the morning.

 

 _‘Hey,’_ His voice thumps at Zayn’s skull.

 

_‘WAKE THE FUCK UP!’_

 

He impatiently yanks Zayn out of his sleep, forcing his eyes open and throwing him off the bed.

 

Zayn swears he almost hit the ground before he's even awake but Lux catches him, floating on his back instead. Zayn rubs his eyes angrily and stands up quickly to shove Lux into the mirror across from them so he’ll leave him _alone_.

 

 _'Knock it off!'_ he hisses at him.

 

 _‘We’ve got a problem.’_ Lux points to the window.

 

He’s already dressed in the mirror but Zayn is still half naked somehow. He doesn’t even try to figure out how that’s possible. Literally, everything is possible right now. Reality has been broken in this town for a long ass time.

 

Zayn rolls his eyes as he walks over to it, looking out of Liam's window to see Sophia Smith walking across the street, over this way.

 

_‘I could take her out silently from here if you're too scared to do it. It will look natural if she's hit by a car in the street.’_

 

Lux’s voice whispers in his head. Zayn looks at him in the mirror as Lux floats on his belly at the window as he watches her walking over too. He's calmed down since his intense outburst from last night now that he knows Zayn isn’t going back to Cocytus. Yet.

 

Zayn shakes his head at him.

 

_‘How about we just talk to her? I'm sure we can get her to go away without resorting to murder.’_

 

Lux rolls his eyes as he looks over at Zayn which makes him snort. It was kind of funny that he didn't like her either.

 

He helps himself to Liam's wardrobe, getting a pair of sweats and a sweatshirt he just slings over his shoulder before picking up his jacket with all his piercings in the pocket, bending over in the mirror to get his old look back as he sticks them back in, ignoring Lux making faces at having his nose pinched.

 

_'Are you going to see the bloody Queen?'_

 

Zayn shakes his head, sitting up straight and checking out the marks on his chest with an approving nod.

 

_'Maybe you should just answer the door naked. Your message will be more clear.'_

 

_'Showing off my dick is a privilege. Not a statement for war.'_

 

Lux snorts.

 

Zayn looks over at Liam in the mirror, still sleeping peacefully. No one else was home yet. Zayn figures he and Lux are the only ones fit to answer the door right now despite the fact that it feels like he’s been beaten with a sack of bowling balls. Demon sex felt great in the moment by the morning after was something he really could do without. Also, Lux’s fit from last night might have something to do with the ache in his limbs, being possessed and all...

 

He brings Lux out of his reflection so he can go downstairs finally, instantly there before the doorbell has a chance to ring all the way.

 

“Hi, Stephanie.” He chirps, all charming and smiles. Sophia looks a bit startled to see him at first, doing a double take, before grimacing.

 

“What are you doing here?” she scowls. Zayn puts his hand in the pocket of a pair of Liam's sweats he's wearing, rubbing over his bare chest with the other as he yawns.

 

“I could ask you the same thing. You don't look a day over 34. How’s your morning?”

 

She looks him up and down, probably connecting the dots that Zayn slept over again very quickly. Maybe she even picks up on the fact that his dishevelled appearance screams morning after, but Zayn could only hope.

 

“Obviously I'm looking for Liam.” she crosses her arms over her chest. Zayn tilts his head to the side.

 

“Really? I couldn't tell.”

 

“Is he here or not?” She says through tight lips.

 

“Don't you tell each other where you are?”

 

“Do I _look_ like his wife?”

 

Zayn laughs briefly.

 

“Darling, you don't look like _anyone's_ wife.”

 

Sophia uncrosses her arms, balling up her fists at her side as she steps up to Zayn, far done with diplomacy.

 

“I don't know where you get off on thinking you have some kind of stake on him but your obsession with my boyfriend is pathetic and so it the obvious crush you have. So if I were you, I'd stop while I'm still ahead because, at this point, you're just making a fool of yourself.”

 

 _‘Is she delusional? You're still wearing his sweat.’_ Lux asks him in his head.

 

“That was a really amazing monologue. Do you get all your comebacks from Mean Girls?” He asks with genuine curiosity.

 

Sophia shakes her head in disbelief.

 

“God you are such a little sarcastic DICK. I don't know how he's put up with you for so long.”

 

“And you're an annoying, crooked-faced bitch. Maybe we should look for him together since we have the same intriguing question. And my dick definitely isn’t little. You can ask him that too if you wanna double check.”

 

 _‘Holy shit I've been trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with her face. It IS crooked, what the fuck is that?!’_ Lux laughs hysterically in his head which makes Zayn have to hold back his own laughter.

 

_'Can you shut the fuck up?'_

 

Lux continues laughing anyways.

 

“Where is he!?” she hisses.

 

“ _Sleeping_. Like most people at 5 in the fucking morning.”

 

“Are you gonna move so I can kiss him good morning then?” she smiles sweetly.

 

“Only if you tell me what my ass tastes like after.” Zayn smiles right back in her disgusted face.

 

“Well since we're on the topic, can you tell me what my pussy tastes like? He’s always been a very adventurous eater.”

 

Now it's Zayn's turn to be disgusted. He knows he probably deserved that but he really did NOT need it shoved in his face this early in the morning. The mental image alone makes him want to gag.

 

The fact that she's still standing here after he just told her that Liam ate his ass is making him rethink Lux’s previous suggestion if that isn't making her leave.

 

“Get. Out. Of my _way_.”

 

_‘She’s practically begging to have her organs removed mate, let me OUT!’_

 

_'I thought you weren't viloent?'_

 

_'Well you ARE and it makes ME violent!'_

 

Zayn ignores Lux, squeezing his fist tight behind his back in strain. He can feel the total loss of control coiling up hot in his chest as Lux’s dark pit starts to spread. Zayn can't control Lux without his reflection somewhere nearby. When it spreads too far, that's it. Lux is taking over and someone is dying.

 

“Didn’t your mother teach you it's rude to just show up somewhere, unannounced and uninvited?”

 

“I'm his girlfriend. I'm always invited.”

 

_‘Zayn-’_

 

_'Don't.'_

 

“I think it's pretty obvious you broke up.” he can feel Lux itching to yank off her head the more she annoys him. Zayn doesn't care who it is. No one else is dying if Zayn can help it.

 

This is the biggest danger with Lux. He’s extremely tempestuous. Lust is all about having no self-control and Lux is completely dry in that department. He lies to himself about being in control of his powers. Zayn thinks he lies to himself cause he's afraid of it. He pretends like he's not afraid of anything but, he's probably just as afraid of everything Zayn is. When this pit spreads too far, they both lose control. Lux has the temperament of a lion and it’s very easy to piss him off. He'd lash out at any moment and make Zayn _murder_ someone and force him to live with it cause he’s never met an actual human being before he came to the surface so he doesn’t understand the value of their lives.

 

Zayn will _never_ be able to live with what's he's done, because it _is_ him to a degree because Lux reacts to Zayn's emotion. He’s murdered people with his own hands that still haven't even been found out about yet and ate two of them with his own teeth. There's currently 6 missing people in Manningtree. He wasn't even capable of eating an animal before. He wasn't taking another life ever again. Even if it's someone he hates.

 

Sophia continues to be unaware of the fuse she's lighting right in her face.

 

“I know you'd love if we actually broke up wouldn't you?” She snorts.

 

“No. I would've loved it if you never used him in the first place.”

 

“Of course that's where he got that ridiculous tripe”

 

“You're really gonna stand there and act like you weren't trying to make yourself his first ever personal cum dumpster? Well, it's too late. He's not a virgin anymore so why don't you skip your ass back across the street to the pile of shit you crawled out of and leave him alone.”

 

He really just wants her to go for her sake. He can't stop Lux from doing whatever he wants for much longer when he takes control.

 

“Wow, you really hurt my feelings there. Is that the only fucking word in your vocabulary? Cum this and cum that.”

 

Sophia rolls her eyes, pushing past him as she barges inside. Zayn let's go of Lux finally, unable to hold him in any longer as his balled up fist unclenches from behind his back and grabs her wrist before she can get 1 inch past him.

 

“OW-”

 

“If I were you,” he starts low, their faces so close they’re almost touching. Her mouth falls open in protest as his grip threatens to change the shape of her bone.

 

“I’d leave now or this day isn't gonna start off pleasant for _any_ of us at 5 in the fucking morning,” he says calmly, although his eyes visibly darken, all the brown going black. Sophia doesn't seem to be fazed by it in the slightest. She’s surprisingly stronger than she looks, snatching her wrist away from him easily before grimacing at the mark he leaves on it.

 

“Are you _threatening_ me? Because you’re challenging the wrong _bitch_.” She says slowly. She's not even remotely scared, her heart keeping its steady rhythm just fine.

 

“This is me giving you a helpful tip.”

 

“Well, here's me giving you a helpful tip.” she leans in close again.

 

 _“You leave._ You bring nothing to Liam’s life or anyone else around you but chaos. He's been acting like more and more of a freak every day and you’ve barely shown an ounce of concern until your fall back boyfriend was mysteriously eaten alive.”

 

His blasé expression cracks, his eyes dialling back down as Zayn comes back. It's as if Sophia senses the nerve she's hit and attacks it.

 

“Let’s me and _just you_ stop chatting shit in riddles, yeah? I know he’s in love with you. I'm not an idiot. Everyone fucking knows. And he just let you dangle all those guys in his face for years, including all the people who spit in his face. And it killed him. But he'd never tell you that because he'd do anything for you. Even if it means _dying_ for you. But that's because he's naive. Too naive to see that you're a walking grenade, and it’s only a matter of time until you go off and _actually_ kill him.”

 

He has no idea how she could possibly know about Zayn’s history with sleeping with guys who have treated Liam like shit seeing that she wasn't even around back then and he knows Liam didn’t tell her. But it fucking hurts to even think about because he knows it’s true.

 

Zayn almost winces like there was an actual physical pang in his chest, unable to listen to Lux telling him that she's manipulating him. Apparently, demons and necromancy don’t mesh well. He didn't even know she could do that. It’s just like with Eggsy only it’s way stronger and malicious intent. She keeps hammering into him.

 

“The fact that you're leading him on like this is really fucking cruel. I know that eventually, you're going to leave him. Again. And it'll drive him insane all over again and he'll never get over it because he'll just keep waiting for you to come back. He'd follow you to hell if you let him. The longer you stay here, pretending like you're not gonna leave, the more damage you're adding for the future so why don't you do him a favour and just go back to where you belong. You’re still ahead now.”

 

The fire inside Zayn almost dies completely and it hurts like a bitch. She was… right. She didn't even know _why_ she was right but she was. Although, with the way she's talking, something tells Zayn that she does know exactly why she's right.

 

Liam would follow Zayn to hell if he let him, and if Liam got trapped too... no, he's not even gonna think about that. It seems like he has a billion fucking things to do and absolutely no time to do any of it. It almost feels suffocating. Like he can’t breathe.

 

Zayn holds his chest as he squints at the ground. He actually can’t fucking breathe. He feels like he might pass out from the pain of it.

 

 _‘Tell her he’s upstairs.’_ Lux urges quickly in his head.

 

_‘What?’_

 

 _‘Just SAY IT!’_ Lux hisses.

 

“He’s um…” Zayn looks to the ground after wiping his nose and clearing his tight throat.

 

“He's upstairs.”

 

While Sophia goes on her way, Zayn’s guard crumbles into dust. His eyes roll backwards into his head as he loses total control to Lux, putting on his shoes and leaving immediately after.

 

 _‘What are you doing?’_ He hisses in his own head as he’s shoved into a corner inside his body. Lux doesn’t answer him.

 

_‘Luxuria!’_

 

“We’re leaving before she fucking kills us. I finally figured out what’s wrong with her face.” Lux tells him, putting his hands in his pockets.

 

“I’m not about to even try to fight her. That’s a losing battle on the surface. That soulless witch would eat us alive.”

 

 _‘She’s a witch!?’_ Zayn shrieks.

 

_‘How do you know?’_

 

“Her eyes are _empty_. She's not just a witch. She's a _wicked_ one. She doesn't have a soul. Probably sold it like the ass who sacrificed us. Did you not feel her voice strangling you? That’s called _necromancy_ Nars.”

 

 _‘You’re seriously afraid of her?’_ Zayn deadpans.

 

_‘I thought you were a demon? And stop calling me Nars, that’s not my fucking name.'_

 

Lux sneers as he continues to walk down the street.

 

“I’m not AFRAID. I’m being _realistic_. This body is too _weak_ to endure just the emotional manipulation alone and that’s not even the very worst of what she’s capable of. She's distracting you with your emotion so you won't notice the fact that you're about to die. I can’t do much to defend myself against other wicked beings here. My source of power comes from hellfire. She’d have an unfair advantage on the surface. You are a walking _corpse_ right now. Necromancy is a force that controls the dead and this rotting body we’re in makes us both vulnerable to anyone that knows how to use it. Any users of that can overpower both physical and non-physical beings, dead or near-death, and condemn them to torment, even if we’re immortal, this body isn't… just general shit I’m NOT in a position to deal with right now as long as we’re on earth’s surface.”

 

_‘What does she want with Liam?’_

 

“Hell if I know. Doesn’t matter. Her insides were rotting away anyways. She’ll be dead by Halloween too.”

 

_‘What are you talking about?’_

 

Lux rolls his eyes.

 

“Just relax. Don’t worry about that girl. She’s the very least of my concern. She didn't come there for me.”

 

_‘How can I relax when a fucking WITCH is in there with Liam?!?’_

 

“I’m trying to help _him_ you stupid fuck!” Lux hisses in annoyance.

 

“I can’t do anything about her here. With witches walking around in this town we won't survive to even _see_ Halloween. You can’t fix Liam if you die and she was threatening to kill us if we didn’t leave. Whatever she wants with him doesn’t matter. We’re going to my house to see my oldest brother. That’s where I came from and you’re never gonna find it without me. The bottom of the marsh leads right to my house in Lust. I’m not letting you take us to fucking _Cocytus_. I’ve never been there and your suicidal tendencies are not coming to fruition as long as I’m here. After Halloween, you can get yourself killed _without_ me.”

 

Zayn didn't know he even had a _house_.

 

“You've got way more than just a house in hell. Some of your demons were your friends too.” Lux smiles.

 

_‘Wait… you’re HELPING me?’_

 

“I’m not helping YOU. I’m helping Liam. What you did to him was completely unnecessary and he doesn’t deserve to go to hell when his body dies. Even if he’ll live longer than the average human, he’s not immortal. The only thing in the universe that can get that shit out of his body is in the underworld. And there will be no Cocytus. No Ira. And neither one of us dying before we can save Liam from eternal damnation.”

 

_‘I thought you didn’t know anything about half-bloods?’_

 

“I don’t but my eldest brother, Ace might. Also known as your sloth. He came out of your eyes. He knows _everything_. Not all your demons are totally evil and hated you. Maybe like… 2/7 would actually kill you if they saw you again, 3 if you count me.”

 

Zayn snorts. From his understanding, Narcissus didn’t just purge all his sins at once. 6 of them lived outside throughout the thousand years he spent in hell. At some point, he actually made peace with most of them. Lux never did because he was the last demon Nars brought out of him and he left immediately after. So him meeting Zayn when he did is literally the first time he’s actually met him as a live demon. Lux continues down the street, heading to the narcissus marsh.

 

“Ace and Nars were really good friends for centuries. He… kinda raised me after you died. He’ll probably be really happy to see you. After we get to our house, he’ll help you with whatever you ask. Including maybe saving your soulmate from suffering the same fate as you.”

 

_'Wait, I didn't tell Liam I was leaving!'_

 

"I'm NOT going back there with her in that house. It's not gonna take very long to get to lust and talk to my brother. He won't even notice you're gone. Just relax already and shut the fuck up before I change my MIND!"

 

Zayn knows he shouldn’t trust Lux. He plays games a lot and he’s really immature. But he was crying so much last night thinking about seeing his brother and he was terrified at just the idea of seeing Cocytus for himslf. After what Zayn's seen down there... well, let's just say his eyes were closed almost the entire time. He didn't go very far. But Lux wasafraid of even just _that._  Last night, Zayn was just suddenly reminded of how old Lux actually is.

 

And he knows he really does like Liam. He knew Lux would fall for him eventually. It's literally impossible not to. And he didn’t want Lux to ever touch Liam the way he does ever again but… if it’s making Lux actually decide to help him, then maybe they weren’t totally fucked. He’d do anything to keep Liam safe.

 

“There’s only one condition before I actually go and help him,” Lux adds with a smile.

 

On his way to the marsh, he passes by the school and stops when he sees Harry in the quad sitting alone on a bench, listening to music as he stares into space with a joint hanging out of his mouth.

 

_“Quid pro quo,”_

 

‘What do you want?’ Zayn wasn’t fluent in Latin but Lux's dialect almost sounds like Urdu, which is his mother language at home. But that was a pretty common phrase anyways. Something for something.

 

“I’ll suck yours if _he_ sucks _mine_.”

 

Zayn’s heart almost drops when he understands what Lux means as he leers at Harry.

 

_‘No. No FUCKING way are you having sex with Harry!’_

 

“Oh come on, I wanna to taste just a little. That dirty fantasy of his can very much be obtained. At least swap some spit or something it’s not like you haven’t before-”

 

_‘We didn’t have sex! And we were stoned out of our minds. It was a one-time thing and we agreed to never talk about it again!’_

 

“Well, it looked like way _more_ than a one-time thing seeing that he thinks about it every time he sees you.”

 

_‘That’s cause he’s an average 17 old boy. We think about getting our dicks wet 24/7.’_

 

“That piece of ass sitting over there is not an average 17-year-old boy. He’s an _indigo_ and his dick is on another plain of being. I've moved on from the car thing. At least let me make him cum. It’ll feel really good for all of us.”

 

Zayn holds back the urge to gag from hearing Lux talk about Harry like this. Not that he's ugly or gross it's just... they were practically brothers and it's creepy.

 

_‘Are you saying he’s actually a star child?’_

 

“Don’t you see that luminous cloud hanging over his head? Only indigo people have auras like that.”

 

As Zayn looks at Harry through Lux’s demon eyes, he actually does see a faint indigo ring of light weaving around through his curls… like a halo. It's emitting lurid light all around him like he's sitting in a cloud of purple smoke. Looking at Harry through Lux's eyes was actually intense.

 

 _‘Holy shit…”_ he murmurs, watching how it stays perfectly still on his head, even when he takes both his hands through his curls and shakes it out. His fingers go straight through the light. He really was a hippie. _More_ than a hippie.

 

2 months ago, Zayn, Liam and Harry were three boys that did everything together but were on total opposite ends of the personality spectrum. Zayn being the outgoing confident one, Liam being the adorably dorky angel up in the clouds and Harry being the mellow soul-child stuck in the wrong time period.

 

Now it’s been revealed that Zayn is actually the cursed embodiment of narcissism itself, Liam can astral project parts of himself from his body at will and Harry is an actual star child with an actual halo around his head. Maybe chance doesn’t really exist at all and fate made them cross paths to converge in this mysterious town, all leading up to this very moment for a reason not even Zayn, Lux or ANY of them could possibly see.

 

Lux laughs.

 

“Hearing your philosophical rambling in your head all day long is possibly the most annoying thing about being in this body. Humans always need reasoning and purpose. Why don't you just relax and go with the fucking flow? He looks severely tense and his balls are wound up into his stomach."

 

_'Why do you have to fuck all my friends? Don't you have better things you could be doing with your powers other than ruining my life?'_

 

Lux shrugs.

 

"I'm just naturally inclined to induce pleasure. I don't mind giving someone who needs it an orgasm and he hasn't been touched since your "one-time-thing" over the summer. I'm not gonna fuck him. Just make him feel less of what he's feeling right now. Which is loneliness.”

 

_‘You don't have to do that! Just let me talk to him. I haven’t seen since the party.’_

 

Lux hesitates.

 

“If you even move one muscle towards going back to that portal-”

 

_‘I’m not! We have an agreement you prick. Quid pro fucking quo.’_

 

Zayn repeats his phrase.

 

Lux smiles. Zayn calling him a prick was probably the closest thing he’s gonna get to Zayn saying something nice to him.

 

 _“Quid pro quo... bachaa'o bean,”_ He says that last part in Urdu as his voice fades into Zayn’s head, giving him back control of his body. Zayn sighs deeply.

 

_Save bean._

 

That’s their agreement right now. And right now, Zayn needs to go ask his friend why he’s fucking crying. Cause he’s not alone. Even if it feels like they’re all alone sometimes, they’re not. One way or another, they’re always together and not any old curse or even death will ever change that for them.

 

 

*

 

  
"Where's Zayn?" Liam was already downstairs before Sophia could even make it to his room after listening to them going back and forth at each other.

 

"Well, hello to you too baby." She smiles.

 

"Where's. _Zayn_. And why are you even here." He repeats something about his eyes dangerous. Sophia gestures to the door.

 

"He left."

 

Liam is instantly back in his room, throwing on a shirt and a pair of shoes then back downstairs. Sophia gasps in shock, holding her chest as she backs away.

 

Liam feels inside himself but he can’t see shit but darkness. But he knows Zayn is just up the street and he could catch up to him in seconds. When he moves past Sophia, she grabs his arm, stopping him.

 

"Wait!"

 

" **WHAT**?" That voice shreds through Liam's throat  _straight_ from the pit in his gut and it scares the shit out of him. He looks at the ground in alarm as he feels it moving around inside him.

 

Sophia doesn't seem fazed by his obviously inhuman capabilities anymore.

 

"I need to talk to you."

 

“What could you possibly have to say to me now? Am I a freak? A girl? A _fag?_ You wanna finish me off so you can still take my virginity? Well, it's too late for that. And you."

 

"That's not why I'm here." She says, rolling her eyes.

 

"There’s nothing I want to hear from you after what you said to him. You have no fucking idea what he's been going through since the fire or with Louis or with ME so why do you think you can just storm in here and shit on everything in your path?"

 

"I'm sick Liam." She blurts with her eyes closed. Liam's face falls in confusion.

 

"...what?"

 

"Andy is in the hospital. He told he had something so I got tested and found out I have it too. Now he's in the hospital and I probably will be too by next week.”

 

"Like... an STD?"

 

Sophia nods.

 

Liam shakes his head, walking away

 

"I'm really sorry you've got yourself in such an awful situation but that's really not my problem." He continues on

 

“I have to go fix something you just broke and I'd prefer that when we get back, you're not here. I’ve got bigger things to concern myself with right now other than you catching an STD."

 

He says as he goes to the door.

 

"Like your boyfriend walking away?" She spits behind him. Liam freezes as he clasps the handle.

 

"You know, I actually made a mistake didn't I? Zayn's not the fool here at all. He's got exactly what he wants already: Your entire _soul_. That's all those things want from us."

 

Liam let's go of the handle slowly, leaving it crushed and totally unusable now as he turns back to Sophia.

 

"You keep chasing after him like a lost puppy, you're gonna be the next one he kills because he's never gonna notice you being crushed under him. He's not coming back."

 

Liam’s blood runs cold as he stalks over to her and grabs her neck, bending her back over the railing of the stairwell, that dark side in him doesnt even need to be triggered again. He's already in it.

 

 _"I don't know what you think you know but you better stop talking right now because you are begging for the wrong kind of reaction."_ He growls in her ear. Sophia laughs.

 

"Oh, I know about the incubus running around here."

 

Liam pulls back a little, shocked but still feeling his skin crawl.

 

"The Enchiridion you’ve been reading belongs to my grandfather."

 

Liam blinks once.

 

"Your... _grandfather_?"

 

"I never believed that shit he always spewed about angels and demons but I've never actually seen it for myself… until now." She says, looking at his feet not quite touching the ground, hovering just a few inches above it. He makes himself go back down. He still hadn't got the hang of floating in his body. It feels weird. He probably never will. Zayn pushing him out of his window again only intensified his fear of heights.

 

Right now, he doesn't even know what to say. He completely forgot that the guy who sold the Enchiridion to him said he was cousins with Sophia. It never occurred to him that she knew what was really going on too. She glances at the scar on Liam's neck.

 

"He bit you didn't he?" She shakes her head, "So. You won't get sick. But he is. He's gonna get be weak and nasty again soon until he lets the demon take over to feed the insatiable beast. Only this time, he won't be back. Halloween is less than a month away. He’s dying either way cause he’ll never be human again.”

 

For someone who’s never seen this for herself, she sure did seem to know a _lot_. She's a liar just like her crooked cousin. Liam tightens his grip on her neck, bending her back even more. She grimaces a little but, still smiles. She knows he's not gonna do anything.

 

"So what now?" She whispers, her lips grazing his, "Are you gonna kill me?"

 

Her eyes dart between his, then down to his lips

 

_"Seduce me?"_

 

She looks back into his eyes.

 

"Go on.... _do it,"_

 

Liam let's go of her, covering his face with his hands while she drops to the stairs, sitting there as she rubs her throat. Inside of him, he looks for Zayn again... but he still can’t see anything at all.

 

"Where is he?!?"

 

Sophia rubs her neck, glaring at Liam

 

  
"How the hell should I know?" She croaks.

 

"Maybe at the police station, turning himself in for murder. Or even better. Hell, where he belongs."

 

He feels her words trying to claw at him, kind of like how Lux does when he seduces Liam. But hers feels like she's trying to break down a brick wall with a simple hammer. Because that's what Liam is right now. Emotions were things he could cast aside. Whatever she's trying to do is useless because she's brought a knife to a gunfight.

 

She chokes again suddenly, being lifted into the air by unseen forces as Liam stands at the door, making her float over to him.

 

"You clearly aren't as clueless as you've been pretending to be. I'm guessing since you and Perrie are so tight, she told you what a psycho I am since she's the only other person who knows that after what she heard in the bathroom a few days ago. Or maybe it was Johnny? Because there's no way you can prove that Zayn is the source of any of this."

 

 _"Liam,"_ she gags _"I... can't breathe!"_

 

He lets up on her lungs so she can talk

 

"Why are you here? I know you didn't come here just to announce that you've got an STD.”

 

"Your fucking friend stole my family's archives and he has something that _belongs_ to me.”

 

Liam squints at her.

 

“Harry didn’t steal anything. Your greedy cousin practically threw it at us!”

 

“All I know is that crackhead hippie better give me back my keychain so I can fix this disease your demon has spread around or the police will know exactly who’s been eating all the little boys in town.”

 

“You're carrying around a disease that's probably gonna kill you in a few weeks and you think you're in a position to threaten anyone? I don't even know where Zayn went, what makes you think the police will?”

 

“You know exactly where he’s going. I can tell you how to get there.”

 

“How about you tell me and I don't drop you off the roof of my house right now.”

 

“What's stopping you?” she challenges.

 

They stare at each other for a tense moment. Liam didn't really know if he had it in him to kill anyone but…. Sophia was really testing his limit right now. When the pit in his gut turns his blood into ice, his restraint feels jeopardised. Like he won't be able to control anything he does. At all.

 

 _“Talk. Now_.”

 

Sophia smirks at him, not saying anything.

 

"You still want your tongue in your mouth or ripped out the ground?"

 

“Give me back my fucking keychain and then we can talk.”

 

Liam paralyses her limbs so the only thing she can do is breathe as he brings her down right in front of him.

 

**_"You don't tell me everything you know right NOW or that sick thing you're carrying between you legs isn't gonna be the only thing that kills you."_ **

 

Sophia winces at his voice vibrating around painfully inside of her ribs. She just barely nods. Liam drops her on the ground right after.

 

“So _babe_ , where do we start?” he chirps, squatting down in front of her with a sweet smile.

 

She coughs, holding her throat.

 

“Liam, I need my keychain. Not the whole thing. Just one wish.” she turns to an emotional plea now since her trying to manipulate or blackmail him is useless.

 

“Why don't you go to your families shop and just ask your cousin for another one?”

 

“That’s not a shop! It's our grandfather’s estate for everything he's ever collected. It used to be an open house for viewing. That's why you found it online. There aren’t a tonne of those things just lying around for anyone to use! He’s not supposed to sell that stuff. He just conned you out of money because he's an idiot!”

 

He helps her stand up but clasps her hand tightly and yanks her into him when she tries to pull away. He looks her in the eye, reaching into her with his gaze and taking hold of her attraction to him, caressing it like how Lux does.

 

“ _You help me find Zayn,_ ” he says slowly, leaning close as she's entranced by his gaze.

 

_“I’ll split your knees open and heal you myself.”_

 

Sophia’s pupils are blown wide as she nods slowly. Liam smiles. Persuasion was nice.

 

He releases her then.

 

“So how does a demon make his way to hell?”

 

“Probably through Dante’s inferno… if it even exists.”

 

“What’s Dante’s inferno?”

 

“It’s all 9 of the levels of hell. The legend that inspired the song High Tide used to hypnotise Zayn.”

 

Liam’s nerve pulses at his jaw.

 

 _“You knew about this that whole time and you didn't say anything?”_ He says, careful not to explode right there.

 

“I didn't think any of that stuff was real until last week!” she yells defensively.

 

He can tell she's lying. Her heart beat has been ratting her out. Actually, she's been lying about almost everything except for the stuff about her grandfather and that she’s sick. He didn't have time to play games with her.

 

The portal opened tonight and once Zayn went through it, there was no way anyone else could.

 

Even if they could get through it, he couldn't tell where Zayn was anymore. He could be anywhere by that time and he assumes hell isn't a place you can happen upon people in. There are 9 levels. All Liam's knows is Cocytus is last and Lust is second. He needed to get Harry to give back his monkey's paw, and getting Harry to help him get rid of Sophia should be easy, he figures. Of course, he had to be wrong about that too.

 

  
*

 

  
“No way am I wasting a monkey's paw on your evil girlfriend!” Harry exclaims while they're at lunch. They haven’t been to a single class today.

 

“Evil _ex_ -girlfriend… and come on! You’ll still have one wish left after!”

 

“And what if I need 2? The underworld isn't a trip through the park Liam, and even that is a life risk around here now.”

 

“You don't have to go with me. In fact, you probably won’t even be able to. Humans can't cross into other worlds through portals.”

 

“That Dante fellow did. It’s called Dante’s Inferno afterall.”

 

“Yeah, and he had a guide with him. We don't have time for that.”

 

Harry shakes his head at him in disbelief.

 

“You really plan on travelling through the underworld, aimlessly looking for Zayn ALONE?’

 

Liam shrugs.

 

“He’s doing it right now”

 

“Yeah but he’s not alone. He already has a local resident evil inside him. I'm sure the travel guide is helping a little.”

 

“So you're not gonna let me use 1 puny wish?”

 

“I'm sorry but I'm not giving Sophia anything. You don't even need her! There’s already a portal in Zayn's room, where he's probably at right now SLEEPING, and even if that doesn't open until tonight I'm sure Johnny from that shop would gladly tell you how to get through inferno!”

 

Harry suggested they try the Narcissus marsh if Lux really ran off with his body but there was something spooky about being there. Any time Liam even drives past the area, his stomach drops even when he was a kid despite the marsh being deep in the woods. It’s like the worst kind of deja vu. The kind that gives you a familiar sense of death raising the hairs on your head. Now that he knows what it is, it only makes it that much scarier. Harry's older brother, Mikey and his crazy friends are the only people Liam knows of that weren't scientists that's got really close to it but they were really wild as it is.

 

Plus it’s too deep. Diving into there was suicide.

 

“1, I can't go through Zayn's portal without Zayn, and 2, he's Sophia’s cousin and a con artist! He was already scared shitless when he realised I was a demon. He’s not gonna help me with anything.”

 

Harry takes out the monkey's paw, dangling it around his finger as he thinks.

 

“Harry, it's not for Sophia. It's for Zayn.”

 

“I fucking told you Zayn said he was going home this morning. Am I speaking Italian right now?”

 

“For all I know, that could’ve been LUX! Zayn wouldn’t just leave me without saying anything, that doesn’t make any sense at all!”

 

“It definitely _was_ Zayn and he told me he wasn't leaving until he got your shit straight FIRST. You just can’t remember it. But you do remember him specifically saying not to follow him to hell.”

 

“I can’t just go off that kind of assumption! You don’t know if that was Zayn. Lux could be off doing whatever he wants with his body right now. Just give Sofa back her goddamn keychain!”

 

“ _OR_ ,” Harry counters loudly as the continue to argue, twirling the chain around his finger.

 

“We could go to Zayn's house first so you see he’s actually stoned and relaxing like how I was SUPPOSED to be today. I’ll go off assumptions before I let your gullible ass get me conned out of anything. She didn't wait all this time pretending like she didn't know anything for nothing. She has an ulterior motive Liam she wouldn't straight up tell you what she wants. Her cousin is Eggsy Miller. Maybe she's some kind of witch too! You know, the evil satan kind.”

 

**“HER COUSIN IS EGGSY FUCKING MILLER!?”**

 

The entire lunchroom goes silent as everyone looks in their direction. Harry smiles awkwardly as he waved. Liam grabs his arm and leaves the lunchroom.

 

“Okay, we're seriously lacking communication right now so you need to explain to me how the fuck Sophia is cousins with the guy who _murdered_ Zayn,” Liam says quietly in the hall.

 

Harry looks totally confused about the fact that he doesn't know this already.

 

“That weird Johnny fellow at the devil shop. He said Eggsy was his cousin so I figured that meant Sophia was related to him some kind of way.”

 

Liam looks off to the side.

 

“Oh my God… it was _her_ ,” he says it calmly but there are about 80 different emotions churning in his gut right now as some sick gears finally connect. Boiling up. Oh God, he's gonna be sick. And his sick wasn't an easy one.

 

Harry sees his face going green and quickly ushers him out the door they're standing next to, leading to the parking lot. Liam proceeds to puke black vomit all over the pavement, emptying his stomach completely. Harry has to look away. He was the empathetic vomit type. Seeing all that shit was gonna make him sick too.

 

The sound of it doesn't do him any better, though. He ends up kneeling over and vomiting anyways. They look absolutely insane, bent over on their knees outside as they both projectile vomit next to each other. Everyone that walks by grimaces and walks back in the other direction. Just another typical day in Manningtree, honestly.

 

Once they've both got it all out, they squat on the ground, sitting side by side on the curb, feeling like complete losers. It drains Liam of all his energy. He sort of wishes he could get some hellfire from Lux. He quickly shakes that thought out of his mind. He didn’t want to even think about Lux right now.

 

“Wonder twins got the virus together?” Stan Lucas laughs as he and a few other boys walk by, making the sex movement with his fingers roughly.

 

“Who’s the top in this one? Or do you share?” Calvin Rodgers chimes. It always amazes Liam how much homophobes know and obsess about anal sex.

 

Liam gives them one hard look, standing back up again as his eyes darken. The 3 boys find his boldness amusing. They usually took the piss off of them when it was just the two of them because they never said anything back.

 

If Zayn was here, he'd rip them a new one. If he wasn't getting into a physical fight, he was dragging anyone who crossed Liam or Harry and then probably asking them out later to make up for it. He didn't have any moral code policies for hooking up with homophobic bullies. How people managed to sleep with Zayn and still call themselves straight and be homophobic at the same time was beyond Liam.

 

“Where are your colossal lenses, Pink boy? Can you even see us?” Olly sneers, mockingly waving his hand in Liam's face like he's blind. His fists ball up at his sides.

 

Harry stays on the ground, watching the exchange completely on edge. The dark cloud he stills sees around Liam grows thicker and he is a few seconds from imploding and there's not gonna be one person here on this planet that will be able to stop him. He's been fucked up all day. This was provoking a fucking LION into fury right now.

 

He stands up before this can go horribly wrong, pulling Liam away by his shoulders.

 

“Zayn's house. Let's go _now_ , yeah?” Harry suggests. Liam nods slowly, his fists still balled up tight.

 

“Can I come with?” Olly asks as they back away.

 

“Haven’t got Malik to suck me off in almost 2 weeks. He's a pretty eager mouth that one is, yeah?” he smiles but he's probably being totally serious here. Jokes on him because if he fucked Lux 2 weeks ago, he's got his demon virus too.

 

There was no stopping Liam at that point. Not even in a blink of the eye, his left fist is winding back like a slingshot and destroying Olly’s jaw.

 

Time slows down right before Harry's eyes as everything blurs together. It makes that sickening sound of something definitely breaking, sending teeth and blood flying in every direction. He falls to the ground right after, out cold in just one punch.

 

Stan and Calvin gape at their passed out friend with his unhinged jaw lying on the ground, then back at Liam.

 

“Oh… you're _fucked_ , cunt.” Stan says slowly, cracking his neck. Harry covers his forehead with one hand as he shakes his head. They were all fucked.

 

Stan runs up to Liam and throws a wild fist that’s honestly going nowhere. Liam doesn't move one muscle, except for his arm, which moves too fast for Harry to even follow.

 

Liam catches Stan’s hand in his and bends in backwards, twisting it sideways to the point where it’s almost breaking. Stan yells in pain, unable to move or it will break.

 

Calvin watches in horror before he decides to get his own lick in, but his limbs turn into stiff boards at his sides when he tries to come any closer, grimacing like he's in pain too.

 

 _ **“Kneel,”**_ Liam commands with his demonic voice. Calvin and Stan are both forced down on one knee, seemingly not by their own will.

 

Harry covers his mouth, his eyes wide. Anyone that walks by now runs in the opposite direction. He’s pretty sure someone shouts they're getting an adult. Seeing Olly laid out in a pool of blood on the pavement with this scene in front of them was looking very police worthy right now. Olly looks dead.

 

“ _Liam_ ,” Harry hisses as he continues to bend back Stan’s arm, pushing its limit to the very max, ignoring him screaming in pain until his mouth snaps shut and his head jolts up, something cracking in the process as he's forced to look Liam in the eye.

 

_**“I know you have absolutely nothing better to with the limited time you have left outside of the hospital seeing that you've got the virus your fucking selves but if you decide to make the mistake of fucking with either of us again… you won't walk away alive.”** _

 

That voice sends a few stabbing prickles across Harry's skin. He didn't want to imagine what it was doing to their insides.

 

Liam lets go of Stan, although he doesn't move, frozen in place like Calvin behind him, both of them choking now.

 

“You feel that?”

 

Their faces are going red but they manage to nod slightly. Or more like jerk their faces in ugly expressions that Harry assumes is them agreeing. Liam's head tilts up then, the motion sending both of them flying through the air, across to the other side of the lawn. Harry is certain that the angle Stan’s arm is at isn't supposed to look like that when he lands, screaming out in agony.

 

A few adults are coming across the lawn, running towards them and shouting for them to stop. Harry and Liam both bolt to Liam’s car since Harry’s is still in the shop for repair and he’s too high to drive, hopping in and tearing the fuck out of there.

 

“Liam!” Harry shouts as Liam speeds.

 

“I know, I know.” Liam winced

 

“Too far. Too much. I could've killed someone, I _know_.”

 

“You. Are my FUCKING INSPIRATION.” he laughs.

 

“Really?” Liam smiles a little. “I barely touched them.”

 

“That's the point, love.” Harry sighs happily.

 

“Shit, you were so great in the most gruesomely fabulous way! I love demon Liam! I can't believe we got away.”

 

Liam looks into the rearview mirror, a little paranoid.

 

“Yeah... I am so fucked.”

 

He just assaulted three boys on school grounds. There’s no way he’s getting away with that.

 

“I think it was worth it.” Harry shrugs.

 

“You got to knock out the homophobic fuck that's been making your boyfriend's face his personally dick hole for the last 3 years. I'd say that's a win.”

 

Liam glares at Harry briefly.

 

“You’ve wanted to do that our whole lives. I'll be satisfied for you.”

 

Liam looks forward again as they go, zoning out while Harry goes on about Liam knocking out Olly and tossing two guys twice their size out.

 

That did feel satisfying to Liam, but not just because he got back at a few lifelong bullies. Those assholes just came at the wrong time. The darkness inside him… it just seemed to finally spill out for a moment. It felt good but, a _bad_ good. Like if he keeps dipping into that dark stuff in the pit of his stomach, it'll spread even further. No matter how good it felt… he knows if it spreads too much… he might not be able to stop himself from actually killing someone. The only reason he didn’t actually kill Stan or Olly just then is because him getting sick right before took a lot of his energy.

 

That's what almost happened last night too. This dark side coming out… it wasn't him. And he can feel it all over him right now. That voice that ripped out of him… he doesn't know _who_ that was. It felt like he was watching himself from the outside but usually, he's watching himself sit perfectly still. He's never had it bad enough to have a whole other persona he disappeared into. He wasn't loving this demon stuff too much at all. Demon Liam was something that never should’ve happened. Demon _Zayn_ is something that never should’ve happened. All of it. And Liam thinks he’s finally figuring out why it did.

 

“This should've never happened.” Liam shakes his head slowly, saying it out loud this time. Harry tilts his head from side to side.

  
“I think it was bound to happen at some point. Who the fuck still does traditional bullying like that in this century? They’re lucky it wasn't Zayn or else they actually wouldn't be walking away alive right now.”

 

“Not just that Haz. _Everything_.” Liam brushes through his hair in frustration.

 

“Sophia knew about all this. She was in on it and she targeted me for a reason but I fucked it all up.”

 

“Liam what are you talking about.”

 

“After Sophia moved here last year and found out I was basically the only teenager that was still a virgin in this whole town, she started pursuing me,” Liam starts to explain. Harry quirks an eyebrow.

 

“Really? I thought you started dating a few months ago?”

 

“We did but it took a while. In hindsight… I’m pretty sure she was trying to make sure I was _really_ a virgin. She’d make passes at me and I never showed her any interest until months later.”

 

“Yeah well, it was pretty obvious she was more into the fact that you were a virgin than anything else.”

 

“Yeah, but not for the reason I thought! I never told you this but… right before the fire, I heard High Tide talking about Zayn being the virgin they needed.”

 

Harry’s eyes bulge as he looks at Liam.

 

“No shit! Why didn't you tell him?”

 

“I tried to but he was pissed off with me for leaving after he _kissed_ me.” Liam rolls his eyes at his own self. Everything seemed to come full circle and still somehow be his fault.

 

“Anyways, that's not all they said. Apparently, Eggsy’s cousin, who I now know is Sophia, came to live here for a year specifically so she could find a virgin from Manningtree for them to use for the sacrifice. They said she was sure she found them one, but they must’ve mistaken Zayn for being the virgin because she said he was a f-” Liam stutters on the word they called Zayn, his mouth unable to _ever_ call Zayn that.

 

“She told them he was gay,” Liam says instead.

 

“Wait…. are you saying….”

 

“I was the _virgin_ she found!” Liam finished for him.

 

“She was baiting me on purpose… manipulating me, trying to see if I'd sleep with her and then pretending to be upset when I didn't want to. She knew I'd never have sex with her. She knew I was in love with Zayn!”

 

“So… when you told them Zayn was the virgin….”

 

“FUCK!” Liam hits the wheel, then buries his face in his arms in front of him as he drives, still able to sense where every car is on the road.

 

“It was supposed to be me but I told them it was Z!”

 

“Holy shit…” Harry’s face goes white.

 

“Liam… that's really fucking _scary_. She was like... stalking you?”

 

“I know!” Liam mumbles into his arm. Something even creepier occurs to Harry then.

 

“Wait… have you ever seen her parents?”

 

Liam leans back up a little to look at Harry.

 

“What?”

 

“Her parents! Have you ever met them?”

 

Now that Liam thinks about it… they were always out of town or gone out whenever Liam came over. That Johnny guy was the only relative he’s ever seen.

 

“No…”

 

“You live right across the street and you've never seen her parents or anyone else leave the house but her?”

 

“No… never.” Goosebumps spread out all over his skin.

 

“Do you know how old she is? Birthday? Any fucking thing?”

 

Liam shakes his head slowly.

 

“Do you even know if her _name_ is Smith?”

 

Liam shakes his head again, feeling his heart accelerating. Harry's going off her “fake” I. D. He didn't really know anything about Sophia.

 

“Liam that’s insane, you've been dating this girl for months and you don't even really know who she is!”

 

“I just _assumed_ she was of high school age. Why would my first instinct be to think she's lying about her whole life?”

 

“That was _Zayn's_ first instinct.”

 

Liam feels his chest caving in. He was right. Zayn always said she looked like a 30-year-old. Of course, he was only picking with her but deep down, Liam thinks he knew she was older than what she's been pretending to be.

 

“Sophia Smith” Harry tiffs “What a fucking generic name. The name that the Enchiridion belonged to said, Gerald Miller. His grandson Johnny’s name tag, Miller. Eggsy fucking Miller. Guess what comes after Sophia?”

 

Liam closes his eyes. He really was blind before.

 

“LIAM!” Harry jerks the steering wheel before they hit a mailbox. Liam swerves dramatically, narrowly missing crashing.

 

They were approaching Zayn's house finally. Liam parks on the curb as they sit for a moment.

 

“Harry… she tried to have me _killed_.”

 

The following silence that ensues is filled with a harrowing realisation of how close they've come to dying without even knowing it. Something Lux told Liam comes to him then.

 

_‘One human's entire lifespan is but a series of close calls with death… most times even without their own knowledge. But I find that aspect of human life quite fascinating. After all, how could you know you are alive unless you know you can die?’_

 

“We're still alive.” Liam mumbles. This was their mantra at the moment. As if saying over and over will make the notion of death any further away than what it is.

 

“Not all of us if we don't make sure we know where Zayn is now.” Harry mutters, taking the words right out of Liam's mouth.

 

Eggsy Miller and his fucking evil satanic coven were coming back here the day the sacrifice sealed. There’s no telling what the hell is about to happen to Manningtree. Liam KNOWS they were responsible for the fire. They sacrificed almost 50 kids in an inferno then sacrificed their “virgin”. They were performing at the Halloween dance at school. Usually, since there are only 280 (-16% now) kids enrolled in school, they combined their dances so over 200 teenagers were gonna be in one building where High Tide was performing live in Manningtree again and the last day all sacrifices were sealed. On the full moon.

 

“Oh my God,” Liam gasped as all the dots crash into each other.

 

They were all in danger.

 

The only people at Zayn's house right now for sure would be his parents and they could only hope they weren't home either. As they look at the house now, both of their cars were parked in the driveway. Including Zayn's.

 

“Shit,” Liam hisses. “How are we supposed to go now? What if they think he's at school? We're supposed to be at school.”

 

“I have an idea.” Harry puts his bag on his back.

 

“We're here to get some “notes” we left in Zayn's room that we really need. So we left school to come pick them up. That way, we can go up to his room and see if the portal is open.”

 

Liam nods as he watches the house. Zayn’s mum knows that “notes” in Harry speak meant drugs. So it'd be believable.

 

“Okay… that could work.”

 

They go up to the house then.

 

“If the portal is opened, you won't be able to see it. Zayn said humans can't hear or see it.”

 

“What do you mean “hear” it?”

 

“It sounds like thunder. Yesterday he explained to me that it's forged in fear and so whenever it opens, you hear or see whatever you're most afraid of.”

 

“He's still afraid of thunder?” Harry laughs. Liam can’t help laughing about it too. It was pretty funny that he was literally a demon and still scared of thunder.

 

When they knock on the door, Zayn's mother answers, happy to see both Harry and Liam, inviting them inside without them even having to give some bullshit ass excuse for being here in the middle of the afternoon.

 

“Zayn could probably use some company right now. He's been feeling a bit ill as of late.” she sighs. Harry and Liam both look at each other.

 

“Wait… he's _here_ \--”

 

“Yeah, that's why we came over.” Liam cuts Harry off.

 

“Is it okay if we go up to his--”

 

A huge clap of thunder sounds from upstairs then. Liam clears his throat mid-sentence to play off being startled.

 

“T-to his room?”

 

His mother smiles, nodding without even flinching or indicating that she could hear what was happening right above her head.

 

They make their way upstairs then.

 

“Am I going crazy or was I the only one that heard that?” Harry whispers. Liam squints at him.

 

“ _You_ heard that?”

 

As soon as Liam says that another louder clap of thunder comes from Zayn's room.

 

“How can you _not_ hear that?” Harry hisses.

 

Okay so maybe Harry really was an alien… Liam doesn't really care to think too hard about it. Obviously, the portal was open on the other side of Zayn's closet. His door is locked, though.

 

“Can you open it?” Harry asks. Liam makes a face at him.

 

“You expect me to break the door down?”

 

“Zayn said not to come in his room.”

 

Harry and Liam both look across the hall to find Safaa peeking her head out of her door at them.

 

“Safaa!” Harry smiles, squatting down as she ran into his outstretched arms.

 

“Why aren't you in school?” he asks, sitting her on his knee.

 

“I'm sick. Just like Zaynie.”

 

“You don't look very sick.” Liam narrows his eyes at her as he smirks. She wasn't sick at all.

 

“Neither does Zayn and he doesn't have to go to school!” she pouts.

 

“What else did he tell you?” Harry asks. She leans in close, covering her mouth like she's telling a secret.

 

“Lux said he'd be right back.”

 

Liam crouched down next to Harry.

 

“What about Z?”

 

Safaa shrugs. Liam decides that he is gonna have to break the door down. Or at least the handle.

 

He stands back up and easily pulls the handle right off the door, pushing it open and going inside. Safaa and Harry follow him into Zayn's room, which is expectantly empty.

 

Safaa walks right over to the closet, going to open it.

 

“Wait! Saf STOP!”

 

Liam grabs her but the doors fly open anyways, exuding blinding violet and golden light and sucking out the air in the room, pulling him into it. It’s too strong for him to hold out. They both fall forward, into the closet. Harry holds onto the back of his shirt but gets dragged in with them. Everyone yells until they fall on top of it, smashing their faces like they've hit glass. Harry and Liam open their eyes, blinking down at the whole universe they've fallen on top of.

 

“It’s just a closet silly.” Safaa laughs, standing up on what looks like a glass floor that reveals endless worlds of space that drops into a deep red void of space. The must be _hell_. Apparently, she doesn't see it but Harry and Liam can.

 

Liam grabs her and pulls Harry up as he gets them away from the portal. He knows he can't get through it without Zayn but there was something about being near it that made his stomach feel like it was dropping infinitely, like how it does when you're going downhill on a roller coaster only, it never ends.

 

“Okay, so how are you supposed to get anywhere if you can't go through the portal?” Harry asks as Liam pokes his finger against it.

 

Liam gazes into it. It was so beautiful on the other side. He looked back at Harry then.

 

“I don't understand how you can even see it…”

“Well, it’s only been 6 hours. I’m still on a steady growing high. I feel like I can see everything right now. Maybe I'm special.” he shrugs. Liam snorts, looking back at it.

 

“Yeah. You're ‘special’ alright.”

 

They both kneel in front of it, thinking about what to do while Safaa plays in Zayn's room behind them.

 

“Maybe you can ask the monkey's paw to open one.”

 

“Yeah… I don't think so.”

 

“Harry,” Liam sighs “You already have a wallet of infinite amounts of money. What more could you need to wish for?”

 

“This isn't even about me being stingy mate. That guy wasn't kidding when he said this is dangerous to use.”

 

“What do you mean…” Liam frowns

 

“I asked the monkey's paw to make my wallet never run out of cash for as long as Zayn's soul is cursed. And it still hasn't run out no matter how much money I take from it.”

 

“WHY WOULD YOU EVEN ASK SOMETHING LIKE THAT?” Liam shouts with wide eyes.

 

“YOU LITERALLY SOLD ZAYN'S SOUL TO A FUCKING MONKEYS-”

 

“Shhhh!” Harry covers Liam's mouth, pointing over to Safaa, joyfully drawing a picture on Zayn's rug.

 

“ _Technically_... but it was just a random thought, I didn't think it was gonna count unless I said it out loud, let alone actually work!”

 

Liam stands up, feeling like his heart is quivering.

 

“I get his body sacrificed to Satan, you hit him with your car and break his neck then sell his soul to the devil… we just really hate Zayn don't we?”

 

“Liam…” Harry stands up as well, regret all over his face.

 

“I didn't mean to! I was actually trying to think of a way to reverse it so it won't backfire-”

 

“No don't,” Liam shakes his head “Fuck the monkey's paw. You ask it anything and you'll get a knife in your back along with your request. Opening a portal shouldn't be too hard.”

 

“Lima!” Safaa chirps behind him. Liam looks back at her and smiles.

 

“Yes, love?” She's drawn a huge star with a goat looking creature inside around the perimeter of Zayn's rug in sharpie.

 

“That's a very beautiful picture but, I don't think Zayn's gonna like it too much.”

 

“Give me your hand,” she says with a serious, concentrated expression. Liam does, holding out his hand for her. She holds it for a moment before taking a pair of scissors and slicing his palm open. Liam yelps in pain as she smears his hand all over Zayn's rug, staining it with blood. He springs to his feet right after.

 

“I’m sorry--”

 

“It's okay,” Liam winced, resisting the urge to swear as he goes to the bathroom in the hallway.

 

“It was an accident.”

 

As he washed his hand off, he watches how the cut slowly closes back up and heals over.

 

“wow…”

 

He flexes his hand a few times. Okay, so this demon body had both pros and cons. Mostly cons. When he goes back to the room, Safaa is chanting something in a different language with her hands on the rug while Harry watches with a scared expression, holding his own hand that is bleeding with the same cut Liam just had.

 

“What happened? Liam asks, watching her cautiously.

 

“What's she doing?”

 

Harry shakes his head slowly.

 

“It kind of sounds Italian but… I think she's speaking latin, which is pretty similar.”

 

“What’s she saying?”

 

“She’s asking the Demiurge to open the spiritual oasis.”

 

Liam didn't even know she could speak Latin. Urdu and Arabic, yeah but _Latin?_

 

 _“Why didn’t you fucking stop her?!?”_ He hisses quietly

 

“She’s a bloody four-year-old Liam what’s she hurting? She's just mimicking Zayn… when he opened the portal. She must’ve watched him cut his hands open and chant the same thing.”

 

Below Safaa, her drawing glows, the circle being engulfed in light before she stands up and Harry eats his words. When the light dies down, the rug begins to crumble around the edges, slowly becoming transparent as a deep hole is revealed underneath. She stands up then and smiles at them.

 

“I did it! I did it!” she cheers, jumping up and down with glee on the disintegrating rug, making both Harry and Liam's hearts jump.

 

“Safaa. Don’t. Move.” Harry says as he approaches her slowly. Safaa stops jumping, tilting her head sideways.

 

“Did I do it right like Zayn?”

 

Liam and Harry both nod quickly when she goes to walk over to them.

 

“STOP!” they both yell simultaneously.

 

Safaa frowns, looking down at her feet.

 

“I didn't do it right did I?” she pouts, plopping down on her butt as she crosses her arms sadly. Harry freezes as the rug totally disappears, leaving her floating over the hole like she's sitting on glass.

 

 _“Are you doing that?”_ Harry whispers to Liam, who shakes his head slowly, mouth gaping. Their portal looks like the complete opposite of Zayn's. Whereas his is full of light and thunder, this one is totally black and quiet… like an abyss.

 

“Saf, come here baby. Come to this side.” Liam has a manic smile plastered on his face so as not to alarm her, stretching out his arms so she'll come to him.

 

Safaa sniffs, looking up. She smiles when she sees Liam's arms opened for a hug. When she stands up, Liam's eyes twitches. Watching her stand over an abyss was unsettling but… humans can't go through portals. Apparently, a child can open them but, not go through it. He'd still feel better if she got off of it, just in case.

 

“Be cArefuL,” Liam says through clenched teeth when she takes a step. Safaa pauses for a beat, making both Liam and Harry's skin crawl with anxiety before she breaks into a wide grin, thinking they're playing a game.

 

She makes like she's gonna run across the portal but Liam snatches her up into the air with his mind, making her laugh and giggle as she floats up over to him, into his arms, hugging her tightly into him. Harry finally allows himself to breathe, sighing heavy with relief.

 

“Bloody hell. I almost shit my pants.”

 

“Oi!” Liam grimaces, covering Safaa’s ears.

 

“Language.”

 

Harry rolls his eyes, looking close to the portal.

 

“Her big brother is Zayn, I'm sure she hears worse on a daily basis.

 

“Don't talk about him either!” Liam hisses then he lets go of her ears.

 

“That was so much fun!” she exclaims joyfully, hopping up and down in Liam's lap.

 

  
“Do it again!”

 

“Um,” Liam laughs nervously as he watches Harry stare into the abyss.

 

“Okay. I will just hold on a tick.”

 

Liam stands up, holding Safaa on his hip as he carefully walks over and peeks into it as well. It's totally black. Blacker than black. Like an actual void in the floor. It's like staring into Lux’s eyes. It's even entrancing in the same way. They can't look away from it.

 

“What are you looking at?” Safaa chirps. It's her voice that breaks their trance.

 

Harry and Liam both snap out of it. They need to get rid of this thing. If Zayn told Liam he was going back, then Liam was just gonna have to go off the assumption and wait for him to come back. Liam backs away, putting Safaa down by the door.

 

“Okay, we’re not going to draw goats on rugs or cut ourselves anymore, yeah?” Liam tells her but, she frowns. Her big blue eyes well up with tears.

 

“No! You're gonna disappear like bhai.”

 

“No no no, I'm not gonna disappear and neither is Zayn,” Liam assures her, looking at Harry, begging him to help him out with his eyes. Harry springs into action, standing up and stepping around the portal.

 

“Yeah, he's coming right back! I'm gonna wait here with you for Liam and your bhai. Then, when they get back--”

 

His foot trips over the edge of the portal then, going through it instead of walking over it. His arms pinwheel as he starts to fall back.

 

“HARRY!” Liam throws his hands up in front of him, grabbing him from across the room but, as soon as his mind touches Harry, he feels himself being pulled with him. He's yanked across the room and slammed into Harry, sending them both flying into the portal and engulfed in total darkness, save for the hole above them.

 

They both scream as they fall, holding onto each other, unable to see anything. Liam looks up above them, seeing Safaa standing on top of the portal, looking around after having just watched them fall through the ground but the longer they fall, the smaller she and the light gets until they're too deep to even see the faintest of light.

 

“Why is ours so much different than Zayn's!? His was made out of light!” Liam shouts. His voice echoes around them.

 

“She used our blood to open the portal so it's forged out of our fear. Zayn's is thunder so I guess so can't get thunder without light!”

 

“Are you saying you're afraid of the dark?” Liam almost laughs. He wishes he could see Harry’s face. He can feel the blood pooling in his cheeks as he blushes.

 

“SHUT UP!” Harry yells. After a while, it doesn't even feel like they're falling anymore, getting used to their stomachs dropping for the last 20 minutes.

 

“So are you actually an alien?” Liam asks casually as he lounged on his back, continuing to plummet.

 

“No. I'm not an alien.” Harry deadpans.

 

“Well, your blood opened a portal and you're travelling through inner dimensional space with a demon right now so… you’re not human.”

 

“I don't know! Maybe there's a glitch and I'm gonna die as soon as we get to the bottom of wherever the fuck we're falling to in, I dunno, a few years maybe?”

 

“Come on Haz, admit it. You know you’re a space alien.”

 

“I'd slap you right now if I could see your stupid face.”

 

Liam laughs

 

“At least I'm not afraid of the dark.”

 

“I'M NOT AFRAID OF THE DARK YOU DICK!”

 

The smile wipes Liam's face then.

 

“Wait… then what are you afraid of?”

 

There's a pause before Harry answers, swallowing hard.

 

“...what's in the dark.”

 

Liam reaches into his pocket for his phone then, turning on the flashlight and pointing it towards Harry’s voice. As soon as the light flashes on, the walls surrounding them opens its eyes. Lots of eyes. They both scream then, reaching out for each other and turning off the light before the infinite amount of creatures covering the walls start flapping their wings and screeching now that they've been disturbed, flying around, some of them running into them. They smell horrible.

 

“BATS HARRY? REALLY?” Liam yells.

 

“THAT IS A LEGITIMATE FEAR! WHAT'S YOUR FUCKING EXCUSE? YOUR FEAR OF HEIGHTS IS THE REASON WE'RE NEVER GONNA STOP FALLING!”

 

Now it's Liam's turn to have the shit scared out of him as he realises something.

 

“I'm not just scared of heights Haz…” he gulps.

 

“Oh God, don't tell me…”

 

As soon as Liam thinks about falling out of Zayn’s window, they start to plummet into what feels like a tunnel, twisting around upside down and doing sickening drops backwards, like they're free falling off a roller coaster track.

 

Liam squeezes his eyes shut like he did when he fell from Zayn’s window while Harry wraps his legs and arms around him, holding onto Liam for dear life.

 

“I HATE YOU!” Harry manages to scream.

 

“THEN WHY ARE YOU CLINGING TO ME?!” Liam tries to push him off but Harry just climbs on his back, accidentally elbowing him in the face in the process.

 

“OW!” Liam yells when his hair is yanked on.

 

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? GET OFF ME!”

 

“LIAM YOU HAVE TO MAKE US FLOAT!” Harry screams in his ear.

 

“WHAT!?”

 

“OPEN YOUR BLOODY EYES!”

 

Harry’s fingers grope all over Liam's face until he finds his eyes and forces them open.

 

Below them, they're rapidly approaching a light. It's not a bright light. Just obviously different from the abyss they're about to fall out of. Which means they're about to be splattered on the ground. Liam closes his eyes again, squeezing them shut hard as he tries to make himself float. The air around continues to pick up.

 

“WE'RE STILL FALLING!”

 

Liam opens his eyes, seeing that the ground is still getting closer, starting to panic.

 

“LIAM!”

 

“I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE IT WORK! IT JUST HAPPENS!”

 

Harry starts hitting him in his head, kneeing him in his back and elbowing his neck. Liam yells at him, flipping around so he's falling on his back now, grabbing Harry angrily.

 

“STOP HITTING ME! THAT'S NOT HELPING!”

 

“WELL, IT BETTER BECAUSE WE'RE ABOUT TO FUCKING DIE!”

 

Harry kicks him in his stomach and pulls his hair, which does it for Liam. He sits up and grabs Harry by his shirt collar, making them start to spin around and spiral.

 

“STOP… HITTING ME!” his growls loudly, echoing against the walls around them.

 

Harry turns him back around so he's on his stomach again, clinging onto his back now like koala bear while he watches the ground close in on the walls.

 

“DON'T THINK ABOUT FALLING!”

 

“WHAT THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO THINK ABOUT?”

 

“THINK ABOUT YOUR FAVOURITE COLOUR!” Harry yells.

 

Liam’s mind goes blank, shaking his head as they're seconds away from the end.

 

“I… I dunno…”

 

“THIS ISN'T THE TIME TO BLANK OUT!”

 

“I DON'T KNOW HOW TO FUCKING FLOAT!”

 

“WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE GODDAMN COLOUR? IT WORKS WHEN ZAYN ASKS YOU!”

 

“ZAYN!” Liam blurts, squeezing his eyes closed again. A soon as he says it, all he thinks about is Zayn, forgetting that they're falling.

 

They instantly stop.

 

“Holy shit…”

 

Liam opens his eye again. They're hovering just an inch off the ground.

 

“You get a fucking A Liam James Payne! Well done.” Harry slaps his ass, laughing as he jumps off his back. Liam laughs too, his arms up on either side of his head as he looks around. It almost looks like a cave. Completely empty. There are bats all over. It's too dark for Harry to see but Liam can see pretty clearly. There’s a small hole in the ground leading out little ways away.

 

His feet touch the ground as he carefully lowers himself.

 

“Where are we? I can't see shit.” Harry whispers, going to take out his phone but, Liam stops him.

 

 _“Don't!_ ” he whispers but Harry turns on his flashlight anyways and it's the abyss of horror all over again. There's probably a million bats in the cave, covering the walls all the way up to the ceiling. The portal they just fell out of is gone. Liam can worry about how they’re gonna get back home later.

 

Liam takes off towards the other hole, running past Harry who is just standing there, gawking at the swarm of creatures he's just woken up, beginning their descent to attack the source of light that's disturbed them.

 

“Harry!” Liam yells at the other hole they have to climb out of.

 

Harry snaps of it, sprinting over to Liam.

 

“I have to lower us into this hole.”

 

“That's not a hole Liam, it's just an aperture. How are we gonna fit in this?”

 

Just as Harry says this, Liam's fists clasp together above his head right before he smashes them into the opening, expecting it to open up more but instead, the whole ground shakes and crumbles. They both scream again when they fall through the ground.

 

As Liam falls, he stares up at the object falling apart with bats flying in every direction above them. It looks like a dark sphere with a large crack in it. They're too close to see how big it actually is. Surrounding it is endless night skies, but there’s a huge split in the sky, one side being night while the other side is daylight. They’re in the night. Next to him, Harry is still screaming as he falls face first, his curls flapping wildly in the wind. Below them is ominous black waters. At least it's not the ground this time.

 

The impact isn't any easier. As soon as they hit it, they realise this isn't normal water. It's thick like oil and hard to swim in. Liam has to physically lift Harry up to the surface as they both gasp for air and look around seeing nothing but black oceans surrounding them for miles.

 

“It’s like we fell out of the sky,” Harry says as he squints up at the orb they just destroyed.

 

“That's because we did fall out of the sky,” Liam says, pointing up at them.

 

“Look!”

 

There are 3 huge moons sitting in the sky. One far away but still clearly bigger than their moon. The second one in the middle, even bigger. The third one is dull and lifeless… right above their heads and currently falling apart after being murdered by Liam.

 

“Oh my god I just tore apart the moon from the inside,” he mutters, swallowing as he watches the mess he made slowly disintegrate. Harry isn't looking at the moon, though. He's looking down at the water.

 

“Li…”

 

Liam's brows raise as he continues to watch.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I think something's moving under there,” Harry says slowly. Liam looks at him just as something brushes up against his leg. It must touch Harry too because the next thing you know, he's flailing his arms around, trying to swim away but this water isn't really made for swimming.

 

“Liam!”

 

Liam rolls his eyes, taking Harry by the hand and pulling him away with him, trying to float up into the air, but a hand underwater grabs his leg, digging nails into him. It doesn't hurt but, it still shocks him.

 

Liam kicks it away instantly, eyes bulging in fear. More hands start to grab him below the water, trying to pull him down. Harry starts to scream and flail around again until he's pulled under.

 

“HARRY!”

 

Liam dives down, just barely able to see anything. The two moons that are still alive have enough glow shining through the surface that allows him to see enough though and he thinks that might've made it worse. There are thousands of faceless people in the water, swimming over each other, trying to claw their way to the surface but it seems like they can just barely come to only the edge.

 

They claw at Liam but he pushes anyone that comes near him away with his mind as he thrashed his limbs around in exertion to swim deeper into the thick waters, looking around frantically for Harry. These things are everywhere. Their faces are blank and grey, their bodies skinny and naked with what appears to be non-existent genitals... like mannequins.

 

Behind him, one of them grabs his back so he whips around. As soon as he turns, their hand actually goes through his stomach, grabbing at something inside him. It doesn't hurt at all but the shocking sight of someone's hand going through him makes him gasp, allowing water to flood his lungs.

 

The humanoid creatures blank face opens up, revealing it has a wide mouth full of razor sharp teeth like a shark taking up half it’s head as it screeches in his face. It reminds him of what Lux does when he eats someone. Liam is on the brink of passing out as he watches it's hand pull a wispy, silk-like dark substance from his body, stretching out as it starts to eat it, licking over it with its tongue and swallowing it. He can actually feel his soul leaving his body against his will. Other beings around him stick their hands in all over, doing the same thing.

 

The water around them starts to whoosh around slowly, forming a funnel around him until the creatures are ripped off him in a tornado of water. They spin around rapidly with Liam in the centre, cradling into himself as he squeezes his eyes shut until his arms spring out in front of him, making the funnel implode and sweep away everything in its path in all directions.

 

Liam sees Harry being swept away too attached to the creatures trying to drag him away with them further into the water. Liam latches onto him with his mind, pulling him towards him with strain as he fights against the current he created going in the opposite direction. He’s pulling against it with every ounce of muscle he has.

 

Harry is finally snatched out of the current as floats aimlessly, leaving Liam absolutely exhausted when he finally lets go. He swims down to him, unable to strain his mind any further after all that work. When he grabs Harry, another creature's face pops up from behind him, screeching as he claws at Liam, trying to reach into him again. He punches it in the face, sending it spinning away. It shakes it's head briefly, getting its bearings again then starts swimming towards them. He wastes no time pulling Harry back up to the surface, struggling to swim with one hand since Harry is just dead weight at this point.

 

They're almost to there when a dark figure above the water floats over them, like some kind of boat. Liam looks at it distractedly until the creature grabs Harry. Liam swings at it again but it dodges him, digging its hand into Harry's stomach. More and more are starting to come back up from the depths and Liam knows he can't fight them all off.

 

There's too many and his breath is finally starting to run out. A few more grab Harry again and even him but he doesn't fight it now. He can't. As they start to drag him down again and reach into his soul, he sees a white light from above the surface coming towards him, figuring this is the end. It kind of looks like Zayn. It’s his memory again, actually coming back to him as everything Zayn said to him last night breaks out of the vault it was trapped in. It’s the last thing he thinks before his last breath comes out as he closes his eyes, letting it engulf him as everything turns white behind his eyes.

 

  
*

 

  
How many times can one die until they no longer can consider themselves alive anymore? Liam supposes he’s had enough to qualify for entering the land of the dead. He hears Harry's voice above him as he starts to wake up again, blinking a few times up at a black sky with brewing storm clouds in them while the other half of the sky is has a sunrise. He’s laying flat on his back but being jostled around in a boat.

 

“Then he went back to the house after it burned down and started to eat our friend Niall but he never finished. Niall woke up from his coma so... I guess he’s a daemon as well.” Harry says a little ways away from him. Liam blinks again, opening his eyes wider as he sits up abruptly, his memory catching back up to him. He can see Zayn again. All the black is gone. When he feels his gut, the dark pit is still there but it’s the size of a grape and totally still now instead of quivering around and spreading out unstable like how it’s been all day long.

 

“Liam you're up!” Harry smiles, sitting across from him with a man dressed in a dark cloak over his face, standing with a pole in his hand, guiding the boat they're sitting in.

 

Liam looks around, seemingly still in the black waters only this time, it’s not an ocean. It's more like a river running through a gorge of rocky walls. A large black and grey fjord. On the night side of the sky, there’s a HUGE moon at the end of the gorge. It’s light streams down and bleeds into the water, lighting the path for them to follow.

 

“W-where are we? What happened?” Liam looks back at Harry and the strange man guiding them along the river.

 

“We fell into the Acheron. It’s one of the rivers that divide the world of the living from the world of the dead. This is Charon,” Harry points to the man rowing the boat. Liam knows who Charon is already. He read about him in one of the books.

 

“Ferryman to the underworld…” Liam murmurs as he looks up at him. Harry nods.

 

“Yeah, he was already coming to pick us up when we arrived. He just pulled us right out.”

 

Charon was described to have carried souls across the rivers of the underworld. But… you can't get a ride unless you're dead… or without a toll.

 

“Wait… don't we have to pay him?” Liam asks quietly. Harry smiles, taking out his wallet and showing Liam all the foreign coins in it instead of paper notes.

 

“Apparently, this is a universal wallet.”

 

Liam looks around briefly. So… they're currently headed towards the underworld. He looks down into the water, seeing creatures swimming around just below the surface, crawling over each other. The sight of it makes him gasp, remembering what just happened down there.

 

He feels his stomach again.

 

“How did we get out? I thought we were dead...”

 

 _“The Acheron river is a place of healing, not punishment. It is for the cleansing of bodies and souls.”_ Charon’s voice croaks.

 

Liam looks into the water again, cautiously at the things swimming around in the river.

 

“Then… what are those in the water?”

 

_“The sins of humanity.”_

 

Chills spread out all over Liam's arms.

 

“Like… Lux,” he says to himself as he watches them.

 

“So… these are demons?” Harry asks, also looking into the water over the edge of the boat.

 

“Not all sins are demons. Only the 7 deadliest sins of humanity stay the abyss of the inferno. These sins are harmless. Ghosts of petty crimes. A lie. A stolen object. Endless transgressions, all come back to forever crawl in the river of woe.”

 

“If they're not deadly, then what were they doing to us?”

 

“Any soul that touches the river will be cleansed from the inside out.”

 

Liam feels his stomach again, looking down pensively. Well, that had to be the most terrifying bath known to existence. Harry smiles at Liam as his dark clouds are all cleaned off him now.

 

“That’s good Li. I told you, you needed a fucking bath. Got your memory and clairvoyance back didn’t you?”

 

Liam nods a little. He couldn’t see where Zayn was exactly but he knows he’s in hell right now. Even being aware of that shakes him a little. Thinking about Narcissus.

 

1,000 years in hell.

 

“So where do the deadliest sins go?” Harry asks Charon.

 

_“Demons reside in the many levels of the inferno.”_

 

Hell. Liam already knew that one. A wave a silence washes over them as it resonates fully where exactly they're going right now.

 

“What if Zayn's not there anymore?” Harry says to Liam.

 

“You can feel him again?”

 

Liam nods.

 

“Yeah. Wherever he is, I can definitely follow.”

 

Harry nods, frowning his mouth as his head bobs slowly.

 

“Okay… since you’re so confident about casually walking into hell, what do you plan on doing there?”

 

“Help him get his body back and go home.”

 

Harry purses his lips then, making Liam roll his eyes.

 

“What?”

 

“... nothing.”

 

“You're making that dumb expression you have when you want to say something so just say it.”

 

There's a brief pause. But Harry couldn’t keep his mouth shut for that long to save his life so he speaks his mind after holding it for 10 whole seconds.

 

“I just think if he wanted help, he would've asked. Maybe he told you not to come for a reason.” Harry sighs. Liam shakes his head again, looking at Harry now.

 

“It doesn't matter what he wants. He's been coming here countless times and he still hasn't had any luck on his own. He needs help, whether he wants it or not. Even if he calls me a disobedient prick, there’s now way I’m going back now. What he said last night sounded like he wasn’t planning on ever coming back. _He’s not going to go live in hell for a thousand fucking years_.” Liam states, shaking his head to himself.

 

“And no _fucking_ way he’s leaving without saying goodbye.” he can feel the sting in his eyes as he looks on. But the tears don’t form in full.

 

“Besides, we've actually been doing our homework on this. Maybe something we've read in those books will help.”

 

“I thought Lux said those books are stupid.”

 

 _“He didn't say they were stupid!”_ Liam hisses.

 

“He said they were _inaccurate_. That doesn't mean everything we’ve studied are complete lies. A book could be filled with a million words. One of them is bound to be useful.”

 

It dawns on Liam then that Lux read the entire Enchiridion. Well, he skimmed it anyways. But he had to have seen that still-life of Narcissus. He kind of wonders what he thought when he saw it. If he thought anything of it at all. Or even what he thinks of Zayn himself. He can’t deny anymore that Lux acts almost exactly like Zayn. The sarcasm and how vulgar he is. And how he pretends like he doesn’t really care or that he’s not afraid of anything but Liam can see in his eyes that Lux is just as scared of little things as Zayn is. Like last night when he was screaming at Zayn about someone killing them.

 

Liam balls up his fist and sucks in his lips, hitting the side of the boat absently as he thoughts race against each other, piling up on top of each other and stressing him the fuck out.

 

Harry watches Liam for a moment.

 

“You know, I like this newfound Liam. A few weeks ago, you were too scared to even admit that you were in love, now you’re voyaging on a perilous journey to the underworld to be reunited with your dream guy. It’s like _genuinely_ romantic.”

 

Liam scoffs, shaking his head.

 

“Don’t make me _throw up._ ”

 

“I’m serious! This entire situation flew off the rails weeks ago yet, you still seem to be in total control. It's truly inspiring.”

 

Liam snorts, looking ahead as the ferry continues on. This situation flew off the rails and hit the _ground_ a few weeks ago. Liam was just determined to drag them out from underneath the wreck. He figures he's got nothing to lose but Zayn, and that was everything for Liam.

 

That thought makes him think about the fact that Harry has his entire life to lose.

 

“I know you coming along was sort of an accident but it's not too late to go back now.”

 

Harry squints at him.

 

“Are you really asking me if I'm bitching out when I've already gone through an abyss of horror and almost drowned in a river of sin?”

 

“That's the thing. If anything else like that happens again, at least I have a chance at surviving. I don't want to ask you to risk your life with me when it’s gonna take a lot more to kill me than it is you. You still have a life you can go back to.”

 

“Liam, our lives back there are fucked and I will go insane if I have to live through it with what I know now alone. Everyone is dying and Eggsy Fucking Miller and his gang of witches are coming back to town on their broomsticks to finish everyone else off. Besides, I'm not risking my life for just anyone. Zayn has been one of my best friends all my life. I may not be in love with him but, I care about him just the same so if he needs help, then I'm gonna help. I’d do the same thing for you.”

 

Liam expected Harry to say something like that. It’d be a really lovely sentiment if this was something simple but.... they weren't exactly bailing a friend out of a minor inconvenience. This was eternal damnation. If they fuck this up, the rest of their lives were gonna be spent in hell. Forever.

 

“I've always wanted to die anyways. This should be fun.”

 

Liam snorts as they wind around a curve in the fjord. He sounds like Zayn.

 

Speaking of Zayn and Harry, after a beat, Liam decides to ask what's been truly bothering him for the last 24 hours.

 

“Quick question,” Liam stays casually. Harry's brows raise.

 

“What was Lux talking about with you and Zayn over the summer?”

 

There's a long pause. And Harry is bright red.

 

 _“What?”_ Harry says dumbly, which makes Liam laugh.

 

“Come on… I'm curious. It seemed pretty intense.”

Harry shakes his head quickly.

 

“It’s not like I was hiding anything. Zayn just made me swear never to tell you.”

 

That wipes the smile off Liam's face.

 

“How is that not hiding something…?” Liam asks slowly.

 

“Well we were both high and neither of us meant for it to happen--”

 

“What?!” Liam cuts him off, feeling his face drain.

 

“Oh, my god… Harry you _didn't_.”

 

Harry narrows his eyes briefly before they bulge, realising what Liam is implying.

 

“Oh God no!” Harry cringed, shaking his head.

 

“No no no no no no… it’s not what you're thinking.”

 

“You didn't… _sleep_ together?” Liam says cautiously, squinty eyed. Harry shakes his head.

 

“No, it wasn't like that at all. I mean… not really.”

 

“Not really?” Liam repeats. Harry closes his eyes.

 

“No, I mean… I guess it was kind of _intimate_ but nothing happened,”

 

“Well, what _did_ happen?” Liam rolls his eyes, tired of the stalling. Based off the reaction he had from Lux pulling at the memory of it, it was more than kind of intimate.

 

Harry sighs briefly.

 

“Okay. It was the day after we sent Mikey off to Uni. Like a week after you and Soph had just started going out.” Harry squints as he tries to recall.

 

Liam can barely even remember that time anymore. The three of them holding back tears as they sent their role model A.K.A Michael Styles, out to the big kids school even though he's only 2 years older than Hary. Sophia following Liam around _everywhere_ until he finally agreed to go out with her. It felt like it was 100 years ago. Harry goes on.

 

“We were just joyriding around town aimlessly one day and it was weird cause we both knew you were with your girlfriend… even saying that out loud felt weird at the time so the atmosphere was just off. It was like we were in some kind of backwards reality. We didn't have anything to do so the next logical step was to go back to my house and hit up our local drug dealer so we could make peyote brownies and get stoned waste our minds in my attic.”

 

Sounds like the usual protocol for Harry and Zayn.

 

“Eventually, we'd finished an entire pan of brownies which was a dumb idea on it own cause we almost threw up. Things went from twilight zone weird to tripping off edibles weird. I don't know why but we somehow ended up shirtless and having this kind of deep conversion…”

 

“What was the conversion about?” Liam is still anxiously waiting for Harry to just say they made out or had drugged up stoner sex against his giant Buddha statue or something.

 

"Just personal stuff. Like him and Louis, you, my lack of game with the ladies…”

 

"What about me?" Liam urges curiously. Harry tilts his head.

 

"Why does it matter? You already know he loves you.”

 

"Yeah, I mean I've never doubted that before. I just want to know what did you guys talk about with me?"

 

"It wasn't anything scandalous. We just reflected on the fact that you suddenly having a girlfriend was really… _unexpected_." Harry frowns and looks down then.

 

"Actually, in hindsight... I guess he was really upset about the whole thing. He almost cried. But I was really high so, you know it didn't really register. I barely even remember what we talked about, to be honest, my mind was in another universe.”

 

"He cried?" Liam repeats, feeling like an asshole again.

 

"Not like full on sobbing. Just a few crocodile tears. But… it was probably because of the pain from the tattoo, to be honest.”

 

"What tattoo?"

 

"Oh, I left out the part where we gave each other tattoos after we took our shirts off."

 

Liam really was the most oblivious boy on the planet.

 

"He’s got another tattoo?" He shakes his head a little, trying process how he's never noticed any of this shit when it seems like it should've been obvious. Usually, Zayn showed him all his tattoos he had after he got them.

 

Harry nods, gesturing to behind his head.

 

"Yeah. On his neck, right where it meets with his back there was this fancy little 'L' inked there he wanted me to cover up with the bird. He got a bird, I got the giant butterfly moth on the centre of my chest. You have to understand, we were high! You know my art skills turn me into Picasso when my mind dissolves into kush. I thought it was a Louis tattoo that he wanted to be covered up, you know cause they were broken up, but... now that I think about it... maybe it was for you."

 

Liam blinks slowly.

 

"He got that bird on his back to cover up another tattoo?" He says very slow. It's like Harry was revealing they had a whole double life they've kept from him. Just imagining them together, high and sharing secrets with each other while Harry tattooed Zayn in his psychedelic dojo was making him feel a little… left out.

 

Harry nods.

 

"It was kind of an emotionally intense moment. If you're feeling dumb for never noticing, he said started growing his hair out after he got it two years ago specifically so no one would ever see it."

 

"Then how do you know it was my name?"

 

"Because he made me swear not to tell you about it. He didn't have to explicitly say it was for you. It’s just taken me awhile to make the connection. I can't believe I didn't see it until now."

 

Liam looks off in the distance, feeling all kinds of conflicting emotions. It's not like they lied to him. He just didn't realise it was so… close. Not to be full of himself but the dynamic of their friendship was set-up very specifically in Liam's mind.

 

It was usually Harry and Liam… Liam and Zayn. Then Liam was the link connecting Harry and Zayn together. Not literally but... just in his mind. If not him, then drugs. Obviously, they were all friends but it never really occurred to him what they did when they hung out without him.

 

As dumb as it may be… it actually did make him jealous. Especially when they're taking off their clothes and tattooing each other while having heart to hearts. It was just like in year 10 last year when Zayn accidentally sexted Harry a dick pic that was meant for Louis. He didn’t do that intentionally but it still bothered Liam that he was sending that to anyone at all. Maybe Liam was more jealous that what he actually realised.

 

The act itself isn't even the thing that bothers him about it. He doesn’t really care what Zayn and Harry do when they hang out. It was really more about the fact that he never did stuff like that with Zayn cause Zayn always kept secrets from him and kept him out. Well, obviously he was comfortable enough to share with Harry. Zayn couldn't even look Liam in the eye when they talked about anything even remotely personal.

 

Liam knows he's overthinking all of this but he couldn't help it. His brain was hardwired to make mountains out of molehills.

 

In other news, Zayn possibly had a secret tattoo of Liam's name for the last two years. So that was… something. But he made Harry cover it a few months ago. Very conflicting emotions for Liam right now. Maybe he shouldn't have even asked...

 

He supposes he doesn't have a right to be offended by the tattoo thing at least. It's Zayn's body after all. They should really be focused on finding his body if anything. But now all Liam wants to do is know more about this secret tattoo.

 

"How big was it?" Liam asks curiously, carefully keeping his face casual despite what's going on in his head.

 

"Not that big." Harry shrugs, tossing debris into the river.

 

"Maybe the size of a coin."

 

"Do you know who did it?"

 

"I’m pretty sure Louis did which is actually really fucked up." Harry laughs.

 

Liam's cheeks heat up. So Zayn got Louis to tattoo someone else's name on him without his knowledge while they may or may not have been in a serious relationship. Okay, that was kind of fucked up. But Liam can't help feeling a little smug about it.

 

“So you didn't, like hook up or anything right?” Liam snorts as he tosses a stone out of the boat, making it skip across the water. There's an immediate silence that follows.

 

  
“Remember how you said... f-friends make out or whatever all the time and that it doesn't really mean anything…?” Harry asks carefully. Liam looks at him slowly.

 

_“Make-out or whatever?”_

 

Harry's eyes look past Liam's head for a moment before he says anything else, going really wide suddenly when he sees something in the distance.

 

"Hey Charon, what's that purple glowy stuff over there?" He asks, effectively derailing the topic as he points in the direction behind Liam. Liam squints at him.

 

“Seriously look behind you!”

 

Liam shakes his head as he looks.

 

The sky fades from black into violet in that direction until its all purple and filled with bright stars and golden suns and rocks and spirals floating around. It is kind of glowing. It's all in a really huge loop. Too big to see the end of the loop or even comprehend really.

 

It’s infinitely beautiful.

  
[Frank Ocean - Seigfried](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4gtCATqkcU)

 

 _"That is the multiverse,"_ Charon says.

 

Harry's eyes go even wider as he moves across the boat to Liam's side, leaning over the edge in awe.

 

"You mean that's..."

 

" _Everything_." Liam finishes.

 

They both gaze at it in amazement. It was one thing to see a little bit of it from Zayn's closet. It was literally a whole other universe to actually be right there in the presence of the totality of existence. No human can fathom what everything that exists looks like as a whole. But right now, Liam and Harry are looking right at it.

 

The river diverges off in different directions ahead of them, flowing into space. Liam assumes they're going to go towards the direction of the mountainous dark cliff. None of it even looks real.

 

“Stephen Hawking could _never_ …” Harry laughs.

 

“God, it's... _beautiful_.” Liam utters.

 

“It's _God_ ,” Harry adds.

 

They watch it for a while as they go on, letting the space fill up in their eyes like aether. Out there somewhere, a universe exists with them where this never happened.

 

“I wish Zayn could see it.”

 

 _“Zayn has seen it,_ ” Charon says from above them.

 

Liam looks back up at him.

 

“Huh?”

 

“Oh yeah, Charon said Zayn was going to Cocytus earlier.”

 

His skin erupts in goosebumps.

 

"Why there? I thought it was Lust?"

 

Harry nods.

 

"Well yeah but, apparently he thought he was in Lust cause he saw Louis down there or something so he was going back so they could go back to Lust together."

 

So Zayn did come here. Assuming something was much different from actually knowing for sure. Liam did have a little doubt in his mind that they were going on a wild goose chase when they fell into the portal. But now he knows where Zayn is… sort of. He literally has no knowledge about anything having to do with hell so Harry's gonna have to be his guide for this part.

 

“Do you know how we can find him exactly since he's just all over the place?”

 

"We should just go to Lust. I mean, that's where he's going so..."

 

"Okay yeah, but how do we know where Lust is?"

 

_“As sinners drift into self-indulgence and are carried sway by their passions, so now they drift forever. The bright, voluptuous sin is now seen as it is – a howling darkness of helpless discomfort.”_

 

Liam stares at the ferryman blankly, having no idea what the hell that means. Harry nods, understanding just fine of course. Liam was never the most articulate one. He could read and he got good grades but… compared to Harry and Zayn, he was an uncultured dunce.

 

They both spent so much time reading they just seemed to know everything and Liam knew nothing.

 

“He’s saying, Lux is from Lust. It's a huge storm that he can't ever get out of. We'll know where we are when we get there.” Harry explains.

 

“If you can't leave, then how has Zayn been going back and forth all this time?” Liam asks. Harry only shrugs.

 

“Dunno. Guess we can ask when we see him.”

 

_“There are many rivers that sway in all directions. Nothing is ever truly trapped in one place. Gateways and loopholes exist in every corner of the multiverse.”_

 

Just as Charon says that they pass by a large floating sphere of dazzling light, covered in silvery diamonds that dance on their own as it rotates slowly. Several rivers are passing through all sides of the sphere where openings are. Actually, it looks like all the rivers have to eventually pass through it.

 

“Like that?” Harry says as they bask in it's enchanting glow. That looked like a pretty promising gateway. Charon nods slowly.

 

“What is that?” Liam asks.

 

_“The centre of all time. Everything converges at the centre.”_

 

Harry and Liam both look at each other as their jaws drop. _The centre of the multiverse._ It really was real… right there, right next to them. Liam could literally float a few yards away and be at the centre of _everything_.

 

“Seems a solid loophole.” Harry nods, impressed. That was more than a loophole. That was a hole in their loop. Oh. Liam supposes that's where that word must come from. The break in infinite where both sides of the loops meet. Because that's what this entire situation was. An endless mess. The two loops that make up the infinite mess had to meet somewhere after all. And that was their way out.

 

Liam grins wide.

 

“We can go there when we find Zayn! We can go back to the night of the fire and stop everything from happening! We can save EVERYONE! Curses can be broken!”

 

Harry smiles, patting Liam's back.

 

“That… actually, might work.” He sighs.

 

Right after he says that, the ferry stops, jolting them backwards, making them fall onto the floor. They both groan as they sit up, being met with Charon’s pale outstretched hand, almost near bone. Liam almost thinks he's offering to help them back up until Harry pulls out his wallet and spills out dozens of coins into the ferryman’s hand.

 

“I guess we're on our own from here,” Liam says as he stands up. They've stopped at a gate that's been torn off it's hinges, surrounded by skulls sticking out of the rocks surrounding the entrance. While Harry pays the ferryman, Liam jumps out of the ferry. The moment he touches the ground, a rumble vibrates through the air like an earthquake is shaking in the wind. Liam looks around briefly, feeling it move against his skin. It actually feels good. Like, punch right through steel if he tried.

 

He stands at the opening as he stares into the abyss beyond the gate. It feels like it's breathing but also contradicting itself and the ambience exudes death and decay. Solidly hollow and echoing silence.

 

“ _Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate"_ Liam reads, probably butchering whatever language it is carved into the rock above it.

 

 _"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”_ Harry translates from the ferry, expectantly. This was really it. Hell. Never hoped he’d ever see it for himself.

 

“Do we have to pay someone or do we just walk in?” Harry asks Charon after he's paid him well over enough. When he stands, the pole Charon used to guide the ferry whips out in front of Harry's chest, keeping him from leaving.

 

Liam quickly comes back over as Harry nervously asks what's wrong.

 

 _“The living cannot enter the land of the dead.”_ He tells him, nodding towards the pulsing ground. Liam looks down at his feet.

 

“Um… I'm alive too.”

 

_“The darkness in the pit of your stomach unhinges you from both the living and the dead.”_

 

Liam shakes his head.

 

“I don't understand.”

 

Harry leans against the edge of the boat.

 

“Think of it like the pit of your stomach is a box and you're Shroedinger’s cat.”

 

Liam squints upwards.

 

“...so I'm dead and alive?”

 

“No,” Harry shakes his head in annoyance.

 

“You're _neither_. There is no cat in the box.”

 

Liam stares at Harry for a full 30 seconds, completely blank-faced before saying anything.

 

“I don't think that's how Schroedinger's box works.” he finally says.

 

“Shroedinger’s _cat_.” Harry corrects him.

 

“And yes it does! The cat is either alive in the box, dead in the box or not in the box at all so it can't be alive or dead.”

 

Liam holds his chin for a moment as he squints to the side.

 

“... no, I'm pretty sure the cat is both dead and alive.”

 

Harry shakes his head like he's the superior intellectual.

 

“Liam this is a paradox in quantum mechanics called superposition. Everything in the box is possible. The cat is either dead or alive. If you don't open the box, you’ll never know if the cat is dead or alive. Which means you don't know if the cat is even in the box so by it never existing, it's not alive or dead.”

 

Liam's eyes dart sideways as he thinks.

 

“No, you're thinking of a _mind_ experiment Haz. Superposition in quantum mechanics is when the quantum object exists in every possible state. So the cat would technically be alive and dead. But as a mind experiment, it's not a quantum object. It's just a cat that's alive or dead.”

 

“Right. Unless the cat doesn't exist so it can't be either. You're the cat.”

 

“But… I exist.”

 

“Not if you're in the box.” Harry smiles. Liam shakes his head as his mind is slowly being fucked in the worst possible sense of the phrase.

 

“I don't think that means what you _think_ it means…if I'm the cat and the pit of my stomach is the box then that means the box is in the cat.”

 

“But if the cat isn't there at all then it's just a box.” Harry counters. Liam doesn't even know what the fuck they're talking about anymore. Liam puts his hands on his hips as he tiffs to the side.

 

“I'm not being funny mate but are you still high right now?” he asks Harry seriously.

 

“Honestly… I dunno.” Harry squints at the ground as he's confused his own self. He looks back up at Liam then.

 

“What was the question again?”

 

Charon seems to have had enough of this backwards conversation as well as he groans behind Harry.

 

 _“Jesus fuck! I'm saying Liam is a demon. He can pass through the gates of hell. You can't.”_ He moans.

 

Liam and Harry both look at him, shocked that he even spoke like that at all before they both nod in understanding finally, simultaneously saying “Ohhhhh”

 

That made perfect sense. But… that means Harry can't come.

 

Liam frowns as he looks back into the abyss. It stares right back at him, waiting for him to cross over.

 

“Guess I have to go it alone after all.” he mutters to himself, gulping.

 

“Liam no,” Harry tries to climb out to stop him from going but Charon’s pole won't even let him touch the ground.

 

“You can't go in there by yourself.”

 

Liam looks back at him.

 

“I didn't come all this way for nothing.”

 

“Yeah and you didn't come just so you could die either.”

 

Liam rolls his eyes

 

“Harry-”

 

“No ‘Harry’. Just listen to me alright?” Harry says seriously. Liam exhales deeply but waits for Harry to go on.

 

“You’re not going in there alone. You don't know anything about what’s waiting beyond that gate and Zayn was pretty clear about you not being able to come back if you went. You might be stronger now but you're not immortal. You have no plan, no guide and you barely know how to use your power. You won't get past the first ring of hell and if you die in there… that's it. No second chances.”

 

There's a long pause for a moment, Liam contemplating his options as he gazes into the darkness… but there didn't really seem like he had much of any.

 

 _“He's got a point.”_ Charon decides to chime. Liam snorts, looking back at them as he bounces anxiously on his heels. He sits down on the side of the ferry.

 

“But… he's in there. _Alone_.”

 

“Zayn’s not alone down there mate. He’s got at least 6 other demons, and Louis and maybe even Tom too.”

 

Like that was gonna make it sound better.

 

Liam rubs under his nose as he nods anyways.

 

No matter how desperate he was to get Zayn back, he knows Harry's right. Diving head first into the gate alone and with no kind of plan was gonna be a disaster.

 

“You know where he is. He said he's gonna come back, yeah? He might even already back by the time we get back, who knows.”

 

Liam nods again, although that wasn't completely true. Zayn didn't say he was coming back. He didn't say anything.

 

Liam climbs back into the ferry.

 

“Is there any other way to get down there?” Liam asks Charon. He crouches down in front of them and leans close. His hood is empty.

 

 _“The living cannot enter through the gates of hell but these are not the only ways into the well,”_ he says, back to his vague riddles, standing back up and rowing on. That one made more sense to Liam than anything else he's said, though. Liam figures maybe he's not a complete dumbass after all.

 

He looks back at the gate as they begin to drift back to the land of the living while Harry yammers off at the mouth to Charon. So there was more than one way to get into hell. And this was the wrong gate for them.

 

There was a hole in every loop somewhere. Liam just needed to find the right one. And that just might be in that marsh. Every curse could be broken,

 


	7. Hell : Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam and Harry both get unexpected reunions.

 

 

 

 

When they say hell is a teenaged boy, he can come in many different forms.

 

Sometimes his form is invisible. He’s overlooked by many so he goes through life unnoticed. Like Liam Payne, who came out of the womb in a loose body to parents who could see straight through him. Or maybe not see him at all. And that made him feel like hell. So his messed up body's defence was always to not feel anything at all.

 

Other times his form is striking. He attracts everyone’s attention and goes through life with an audience around him. Like Zayn Malik, who came out the womb with a charisma that could attract a fish to dry land and a body with a thorn in his side from the past, binding him to unseen things he’d later see when he came of age. Like hell itself.

 

But in the more literal sense, they usually mean boys like Michael Styles, who raise hell everywhere he goes, leaving a skidded trail of fire behind him just so everyone knows he’s been there.

 

When Mikey comes to town, all bets are off. The only thing you can expect is that the police will be on call within a moments notice if need be.

 

Harry’s older brother was almost a carbon copy of Harry appearance wise. Big curly brown hair, wide sea green eyes and a young and undefined face for a 19 year old that gave him the facade of innocence. They both had equally tall, lean bodies and too many tattoos so, many people used to mistake them for twins all the time. Mikey eventually grew a lot a facial hair and he frequently buzzed off his curls, military style, in case he ever got sent to boarding school though. On the personality card, they were radically different.

 

While Harry was a peaceful child who relaxed his mind with stimulates, talked at the pace of a snail and spent his free time studying culture, religion and philosophy, Mikey was a rebellious, anarchistic trouble-maker who drank too much and never stopped moving around on the account of his ADHD. Harry was always much more chilled than Mikey. They figured he got the crazy gene from their Italian mobster grandad on their father’s side and the alcoholic gene from their Irish grandad on their mother’s side, combining to make the devil himself, Michael Robert Styles. The general consensus was that Harry was probably from outer space.

 

Mikey’s been arrested at least 8 times and expelled from ⅔ high schools during his time in Manningtree. Usually for things like playing practical jokes on teachers that would forever live on in infamy, getting caught sneaking into bars underaged and even for streaking at a few football games. His shenanigans in his day made him a residential celebrity on the local news and a hero to Harry and his friends. They made enough memories growing up with him to last a lifetime, running amok and painting the town bright red.

 

When it came to him graduating, Mikey and his parents had an exchange of _quid pro quo_. He had to promise he’d get an education and not go to jail as long as they promised not to actually send him to boarding school after he got his 2nd asbo for public intoxication. So he got a little more serious academically his last year of college. Harry and Zayn helped him study for all his exams until he passed and eventually got accepted in the University of Greenwich in London and they sent him off into the world to be a grown up. Everyone had a massive sigh of relief that he followed through on his promise but Harry, Liam and Zayn did miss his antics terribly. Especially after everything was turned to shit right after he left. Liam started dating Sophia, Harry lost his crime-fighting partners, Zayn got sacrificed… this was all surely this was all a direct result of losing Mikey to University. Manningtree didn’t have anyone to direct all the chaos onto anymore.

 

When he comes back to town, it’s just when Liam and Harry need him the most. Cause it’s been 3 long days and Zayn still hasn’t come back home yet.

 

In those three days, Liam can honestly say his life has become a living hell, as if it hasn’t been since he was born. After he gets back to Earth, everything that could go wrong chooses this week to do it.

 

First, he's suspended from school indefinitely for breaking Stan’s arm and Olly’s jaw.

 

No one believed Stan when he and his friends claimed Liam threw them across the field as he didn’t touch them but there were enough people outside to witness that he did in fact assault Olly and Stan physically.

 

Next, their parents pressed charges against him, which he was actually expecting.

 

So on top of not knowing when he’s actually gonna be allowed to come back to school, he has a court hearing in 2 weeks now and there's no way he's not getting an asbo. He thought that was better than going to juvie. Even though Stan’s arm twisted completely around and Olly has a metal brace keeping his jaw in place and an entire front row of teeth missing, he knows his mental health will probably excuse him for being severely punished too badly.

 

Everyone in town now knows he’s been officially diagnosed for having dissociative identity disorder so he’s no longer just the dopey weirdo. He’s moved up in rank, branded as the skitzo freak. After spending 48 hours in evaluation in a psychiatric unit, his social worker told his mother she’s working on the condition of his asbo to be for him to visit a new therapist that specialises in split personalities 3 times a week in group, psychotherapy in a community centre almost an hour away from Manningtree. The court hearing will determine the final outcome but aside from the excessive therapy, she doesn’t think they’ll make any serious moves towards him having a criminal record. Not that he gave a damn about his reputation before but… he could’ve really did without having the details of his mental health announced to the entire fucking world. But he’d rather have everyone think he’s a freak that hears voices in his head than have them know he’s harbouring a dark pit of pure evil in his gut that he can lose control of at any moment and kill people with.  

 

And the cherry on top of the perfect week for Liam: Geoff Payne decides to contact his mother out of nowhere.

 

It’s been a good 7 or so years since Liam has even really thought too much about his estranged father. He had no knowledge of where he was or why he went and he really had no opinion or thought about it. Or he told himself he didn’t anyways.

 

Apparently after everything that’s been happening on the news, Geoff suddenly wants Liam and his mother to get out of Manningtree and move to Wolverhampton in the West Midlands where he disappeared off to. As far as Liam is concerned, he doesn’t exist. Hell, as far as he’s concerned, he barely even exists himself.

 

Even when his mother tells him she’s actually considering taking him out of school and moving them to Wolverhampton, nothing exists outside of Liam’s mind right now except for Zayn. His life feels like he’s been stuck getting thrown around in fucking limbo for the last month and a half and he’s finally entered the real life abyss of hell now but no suspension or court hearing or even fucking Geoff can disrupt his focus from what really matters here: Which is getting Zayn out of hell and breaking the curse.

 

After they find Zayn, they’re going back through their portal and to the centre of the everything again where they’d find the right time stream before any of this shit happened. That was the plan they got approval from Charon on and that was all the confidence they needed to know that they could do this. The ferryman to the underworld was rooting for them.

 

On the way home, Charon advised them not to want to go back without breaking the curse first cause then, it would just happen all over again. He explained to them that Zayn in the past would still be cursed but this present Zayn wouldn’t. Cause his curse transcends time itself so, if they broke it in the present, it would be broken in the past too. Break a curse once, it’s gone forever. But this present Zayn has literally dropped off the face of the fucking planet. Literally this time. Liam’s heart can’t take another part of his life disappearing forever again.

 

The Malik’s haven’t been in _complete_ distress. Apparently, Zayn left a message with his parents telling them he was fine. Obviously, that doesn’t assure anyone of anything. Cause even though Zayn still has his cellphone, his location is untraceable. He hasn’t contacted anyone but his parents. Some people think he’s runaway. Other people think he’s the latest victim to the serial killer. Liam’s on the side of the second one. The serial killer being Lux.

 

He knows this is Lux’s doing. He’s ran off with Zayn’s body and Liam can feel exactly where he’s been for the last 3 days because of their tether. He’s too far away for Liam to actually see him. It would be more than helpful if he knew how to use his bloody powers but the universe must have a real peculiar sense of humour. Demon powers Liam could actually use to help them here would be far too convenient right? They have to keep running around in fucking circles before they can get anywhere useful.

 

The only way they’re finding any kind of loophole in getting into the underworld right now is the marsh but… Liam has been a little busy all-around the last few days with all this extraneous drama and neither him nor Harry even know their way around that part of the woods. But they know someone who does.

 

When Mikey comes back home for the weekend, it’s as if the universe decided to deliver them a cheat code instead of a curveball for once.  

 

“You want to _what?”_ Mikey shrieks.

 

Harry is in the living room where Mikey has spent all afternoon lounging on the couch, watching TV and stuffing his face with crisps when he asks him to take he and Liam to the marsh.

 

“Mike you’re the only person I know right now that knows exactly where it is.”

 

Mikey laughs, stuffing his face some more.

 

“Yeah because we were stupid teenagers walking around in places we has no business being. We _happened_ upon it. And I didn’t exactly dive neck first and go for a swim about it did I? Have you been sniffing paint again since I've been gone?”

 

“You’re still a stupid teenager.” Harry rolls his eyes.

 

“And I was fucking 12 asshole!”  

 

It only happened one time when they were repainting the house and it was 5 years ago and totally unintentional.

 

“I’ve got a good memory.” Mikey shrugs.

 

“Yeah I know that’s why I’m asking you to take us, you know where the fuck it is! I’m not _asking_ you to jump into it! We just want to see it, that’s all.”

 

Mikey shakes his head. Apparently, University has made him more mature. He’s even wearing a _cardigan._ He goes to live in London for a few months and he suddenly thinks he’s a fucking cosmopolitan.

 

“Soz Hazzy, there’s no way I’m letting you go anywhere near that thing. We were lost in the woods after trying to find a place to get rid of the evidence of all the booze we'd stolen after some narks threatened to rat us out to the POLICE. You can’t get close to it. It’s dangerous, you shouldn’t even _want_ to see it.”

 

Harry squints as he sits on the arm of the couch.

 

“Did you see something that… scared you?” he asks casually. Mikey never really said what it was like to see it in person aside from the fact that he almost drown from the ground nearly caving in.

 

Mikey sighs, sitting up straight after muting the TV.

 

“Okay this is gonna sound weird but just hear me out, yeah?”

 

Harry almost laughs at the notion of him finding anything at all weird anymore. Mikey spontaneously showed up at home this weekend wearing a cardigan and staying in the house all day to watch the great British Bake Off instead of terrorizing school children at playgrounds with his old friends and Liam’s dad is suddenly alive. They had reached new level of “How More Weird Can It Get?”.

 

Harry listens to Mikey explaining his close encounter with the marsh.

 

“When you look into it… it’s almost looks like a mirror. It’s so clear and reflective to the surface, you can’t even see the river that flows underneath it. In fact, I don’t even know if there IS a river underneath it. That’s how reflective the water is on top. And it’s so still. Even the wind was blowing and it didn’t ripple. When we threw all those bottles into it, it was like it just swallowed them. When you look at something like that, it mesmerises you. Like one of those hypnosis spirals. You don’t even notice how close you start leaning towards it until you’re almost falling in. The ground around it is all sod. Its mushy and feels like it'll start to sink like quicksand if you stand on it for too long. We got rid of our shit and got the fuck out of there before one of us _actually_ fell into it. Trust me mate, you’re better off not seeing it for yourself.”

 

That sounds like exactly what Harry is expecting.

 

“Mikey,” Harry closes his eyes as he takes a deep breath, holding his hands together under his nose, making his silver magnetic rings clink together on his fingers.

 

“I’m doing this for _Liam_. You KNOW he needs this. After what’s been happening in his life, being court marshalled in a few weeks, finding out Geoff is still alive and his boyfriend going missing all in the last 3 days… it’s fucking with his head. I have no idea what he could be feeling right now. His life is hell and he won’t even talk about it. This is the only thing he’s asked of me.”

 

Mikey thinks for a moment, stuffing his face again. He looks at Harry curiously.

 

“That old asshole really went to fucking Wolverhampton?”

 

“That’s what mummy told me Mrs.Payne said.”

 

All their mothers talk so pretty much everyone in town knows about Geoff’s resurfacing and Zayn running away and disappearing. Mikey has always hated Geoff on Liam’s behalf. He has no respect for someone who would abandon their wife and kid out of the blue like that. No matter how messed up your child might be, born blind, no legs, health issues, whatever it might be, they’re still yours. Even though Geoff didn’t leave until Liam was almost 10, he might as well have grown up without a dad.

 

“Him and Z finally started fucking, huh?” He adds, tossing a crisp in air and catching it in his mouth.

 

Harry shrugs.

 

“Alright, whatever.” Mikey sighs, leaning back on the couch.

 

“You want me to take you? Fine. I’m sure the kids fucking heartbroken and I feel terrible for him. I don’t get how seeing a _marsh_ is gonna make up for any of that shit but,” He shrugs. Harry springs to his feet.

 

“Really?”

 

Mikey nods, turning the TV back up as he watches the chefs making creme brulee french toast.

 

 _“Grazie!”_ Harry thanks him as he goes for a hug but Mikey kicks him off.

 

“Aye! _Dacci un taglio,_ ” He grimaces, telling Harry to knock it off in Italian.

 

“No need for the gross displays of affection, thanks.”

 

Harry grins, diving off the sofa to call Liam as he leaves the living room.

 

 _“What did he say?”_ Liam asks as soon as he picks up the phone.

 

“YES!”

 

“ _Seriously? Quid pro whatever?”_

 

“Nope. Get dressed. We're going now before he does.”

 

“Oi,” Mikey calls after him before he leaves. Harry looks back at his smirking face.

 

“You know the drill before I can take you anywhere.”

 

Harry’s brows rise.

 

 _“Quid pro quo.”_ Mikey grins. Harry's face falls.

 

“Oh no,” he groans.

 

“ _Hello? Harry what's happening?”_

 

“ _Quid pro whatever_.” Harry tells Liam who groans on the other line as well.

 

Getting Mikey something he wants in exchange for a favour is always nearly impossible and Mikey knows that. It’s the only thing Harry can’t stand about his brother. Exchanging favours with him was like making a deal with the devil himself.

 

“I’m gonna need a car.”

 

Harry frowns.

 

His car is still being fixed and he’s not allowed to use his license for a while after being suspended for almost wrecking his Acura on an unauthorized road and being out way past the curfew. And Mikey doesn’t have a license at all.

 

“Mike you _know_ I don't have a car.”

 

Mikey shrugs.

 

“We’re not going anywhere unless you get me a car.”

 

This was like a ridiculous test of his he always makes Harry take. He doesn't actually want a car. He's just seeing how far Harry will go before he gets off Mikey’s back about doing favours. Never ask Mikey for a favour unless you’re willing to possibly get arrested. Cause that’s what gonna happen if either of them get caught driving without a license right now. The police here know him pretty well.

 

“Why don't you just steal one?”

 

Mikey laughs loudly as he looks at Harry.

 

“Because I'm asking _you_ to do it. And do I look like a criminal to you?”

 

Yes. Yes he does. That cardigan isn’t fooling anyone. He’s still got the devil in his eyes.

 

“How do you expect me to get you a car?”

 

Mikey rolls his eyes.

 

“Look, that’s not my problem. That’s my only condition and it’s a _simple_ one at that. Didn't I teach you anything? You’ve got loads of friends. Way more than what I did in high school. If you can’t do something as simple as getting a car then you can forget it. Cause there’s no way I'm walking there again.”

 

“No, actually… it’s fine.” Harry waves him off as he jogs up to his room.

 

Mikey’s right. He has friends. And two of them just recently came back to town after a much needed vacation today. Mikey wants a car, Harry’s gonna get him a damn car.

 

_“Where are we gonna get a car Haz? I’m not allowed to be out doing anything. Sneaking out is already nearly impossibly as it is. There’s no way I can sneak out with my CAR.”_

 

“Our Italian duo, Mario and Luigi are back in town Liam.” Harry smiles as he goes to get his wallet.

 

“ _Yeah I know, Ben texted me too. They’re never gonna let you use Tony’s car.”_

 

“Excuse you Liam, you’re lack of faith in me is almost insulting.” Harry says in offence.

 

“Don’t worry about the car, love. I’ve got it covered. Just be ready in a half hour.”

 

Liam agrees hesitantly as they hang up, thinking they’re fucked. There’s no way Harry was getting that car. He’s a hippie, not a con artist.

 

Harry wasn’t usually the type to try to scheme his way into something but he could if he wanted. Growing up with someone like Mikey has taught him a lot of things he’ll probably never learn anywhere else but juvie.

 

Anthony and Ben came back from their attempted getaway earlier today after they finally ran out of money to live off of. No one really knows that they’re back but a few people cause they aren’t planning on staying so Harry needs to see them fast before they leave for good. He figures Anthony would be willing to lend a friend a hand after a little exchange of _quid pro quo_ himself.

 

 _Something for something_. Nothing like making a quality deal with the devil.

 

At Liam’s house across the hall from his bedroom, he can hear his mother on the phone with Geoff discussing Wolverhampton. He can hear Geoff’s _voice._ Liam can’t turn off his enhanced senses. Even as he smothers his face with his pillow, he can’t escape the sound of that hollow voice reverberating around in his head. He can’t escape seeing his face everywhere. He’s considering suffocating himself to be honest but… he can hold his breath for a really long time now so, it’d be more like torturing himself than actual suicide.

 

He spends his time outside of his body where he hears nothing but quiet for now, calmly staring at his phone as he waits for Harry to call him back, feeling himself moving in between space like normal. He’s been spending a lot of his free time here since Zayn disappeared. Just like when Geoff disappeared.

 

There’s a lot he's been learning about himself now that he sort of knows where he is. The aether in his body… he could reach his hand right into himself and pull as much of it out as he wanted, like how they did in the Acheron river. His entire soul could leave his body and stay in this world for as long as he wanted. It was either disappear into the void or go to hell at this point. He doesn’t want to disappear into a void though. So hell it is.

 

Even if the marsh wasn’t a last-ditch effort to see the love of his life again, (no Liam isn't afraid to say that in a serious manner anymore) he’d rather go to hell than have to see the face that voice across the hall belongs to. In fact, he’d rather _die_ than see him again. He thought his father was fucking dead. No way he’s staying here now _._ He’ll have a mental breakdown and they’ll have to lock him away in that psychiatric unit forever. Liam never wants to go to that awful place again. He wants Zayn. He wants him so bad right now and it hurts so much inside that he’s gone.

 

Diving into that bottomless pit was gonna lead to either his own death or Zayn. He’s more so hoping the second one. Hopefully Harry get’s the stupid car. It’d make everything so much easier for them if Mikey takes them rather than aimlessly stumbling through the woods looking for it.

 

Around the corner, Harry walks to school where he knows Anthony and Ben are hiding out in the quad for the time being cause it’s Saturday and no one else is there. They texted Harry that they’d be here for a bit and he could come have smoke with them before they leave.

 

“Haz!” Anthony chirps with glee when he sees Harry’s curly head coming over.

 

“My favourite hippie.” Ben offers Harry the joint but he shakes his head quickly to decline.

 

“I know you just got back and you’re not staying for long but my little visit is fleeting. I was hoping I could... _borrow your car?”_ He asks, biting the inside of his cheek right after. Anthony squints at Harry like he’s got two heads.

 

“Can you _what?”_

 

Harry rolls his eyes.

 

“It’s not like I’m asking if I can drive it off a fucking cliff. Just for a moment? I’ll return it in like 2 hours, I promise.”

 

“Didn’t you just get in a major accident?”  Ben asks from where he’s stretched out across Anthony’s legs.

 

Even though they’ve never confirmed that they’re dating, they kind of act like they are sometimes. But Anthony says he's ace so no one knows how that would even work (He never specifies what he identifies as exactly. Aromantic? Asexual? No one knows but him… and maybe Ben)

 

To anyone that doesn’t know them, their relationship is just confusing. Their close friends are pretty used to it though. Harry is getting the sense that this little escapade they've been on has brought them… _closer_. They’re being very touchy right now.

 

“You drive like a blind man. No way are you touching my car!”

 

“I’m not driving it, it’s for Liam!” Harry explains, which makes Anthony laugh.

 

“Even better. An _actual_ blind man.”

 

He shakes his head as he takes a drag, smoothing back Ben’s sandy brown hair underneath him as he lets him take one too.

 

“You best be calling yourself an uber bruv. I ain’t lending my car to anyone. Especially blind men and hippies who go around killing animals in them.”

 

Word to the general public was that Harry hit a deer.

 

“Tony, please this is important. I don’t know anyone else with a car right now and I’m getting pretty desperate. If you don’t help me out, I might just go and jack someone. Now, do you want to see me in jail?”

 

It’s a bit of a reach but he can see Anthony already giving it serious consideration, weaving his fingers through Ben’s hair leisurely as he thinks. Harry could go a buy a new car himself but, then he’d have to explain where he’s acquired thousands of pounds.

 

“What’s it for?”

 

“Can’t tell you that.”

 

Anthony shrugs, he consideration suddenly squashed.

 

“That’s too bad. I genuinely can’t go around lending my car out without knowing where it’s going. I don’t have a problem helping you out any other time but, this is the worst timing Haz. My civic is literally our only ticket out of this hell town and I can’t afford to risk something happening to it cause we’re fucking broke. I’m waiting for my plug to sell the rest of my weed and we’ll be set for a few months this time after he delivers the money in about an hour. Soz.”

 

Harry was expecting that. Of course they need money _._ That can be arranged seeing that it’s gonna be flowing out of his pocket endlessly for the next one thousand years. He flips his brain from thinking like a conscientious objector towards conflict to thinking like a cunning hell-boy who makes trouble for people.

 

Anthony and Ben were both 18 so it wasn't against any laws for them to drop out of school and flee town. But just because they were of age doesn't mean their parents are very impressed by their decision. Plus the added fact that all they really need is money tells Harry exactly how he’s getting a car in the next 30 seconds.

 

He prompts his leg up on the bench, summoning his inner Mikey.

 

“Then I guess it’d be a real shame if a wrench got thrown into this runaway plan of yours… like if some adults found out you were here right now?”

 

Anthony and Ben freeze as they look back at Harry slowly.

 

“Are you _blackmailing_ us?”

 

Harry shakes his.

 

“No. Actually I can _help_ you.” He smiles charmingly.

 

“I borrow your car for _an hour_ and bring it back in one piece,” Harry pulls out his swollen wallet.

 

“You get out of town under your invisible cloak without causing a scene. _Contracambio._ ”

 

“Fuck… Mikey’s really back in town.” Ben groans as he and Anthony exchange a look that tells Harry his empty threat about ratting them out actually has some heat.

 

Anthony’s parents were straight-off-the-boat Italian. If he got caught, the Mancini’s would end his life and send him off to the motherland before he could even start his new one off in paradise with Ben.

 

He takes out his keys and flings them at Harry, who catches it against his chest, laughing.

 

He points across the quad after, towards the football field.

 

“It’s behind the field. Next to lake Logea, asshole.” He says sharply.

 

“Don’t be so hostile. I’m helping you more than I’m threatening you, love.” Harry smiles, giving Anthony everything in his wallet, which is a good 5 or 6 grand at the very least.

 

It swells to a minimum of at least 5 before it replenishes. Harry’s been stuffing it into a safe he bought a few days ago. The most it’s gone up to at once is 10K. It doesn’t really follow a pattern. But that's more than enough for a head start.

 

Anthony and Ben both gape at the money with their jaws unhinged, clearly not expecting that.

 

“1 hour. As much money as you want when I come back. I promise.”

 

“Bro…” Ben looks up at Harry slowly.

 

“Have you been sucking off some Arabian Prince? Cause we could use a sugar daddy.”

 

“Yes Benjamin, I’m a man of class and cocksuckery now.”

 

Harry and Ben laugh.

 

Anthony kicks Ben off him, shaking his head with a grimace.

 

“Disgusting.” he scoffs, then looks at Harry.

 

“For this? You can fucking _wreck_ my car if you want. Figuratively.” he laughs.

 

“Thank you!” Ben hops up and hugs Harry gratefully. He pulls back for a moment.

 

“So where are you and Liam going? He didn't answer my text.”

 

Harry shrugs silently with tight lips. Anthony looks down at the ground as his leg bounces.

 

“This Geoff shit is fucking him up isn’t it?”

 

Harry sighs briefly. Small towns carry big news pretty fast. There’s a moment a silence hung in the air.

 

“Hey, do whatever you have to do to get it out of his system mate. Tell him he can come see us if he wants to talk or hang. He can’t deal with all this shit with Zayn and his dad alone. We’re not gonna judge him for anything he’s going through. Make sure he knows that too. I know he doesn’t believe it but he has friends. Genuine friends still here for him. I don’t wanna look at the news and see his face in the latest tragedy, you hear me Styles? Take care of each other.” Ben says seriously. He was always the soft side of these two. Anthony was the hard-ass. Harry nods as he backs away.

 

Of course they were taking care of each other. Since their home was being swallowed whole in hellfire, they were all they had. Even Anthony lending his car to him right now was their way of taking care of each other in some shape or form.

 

“You have to be very careful with driving in the street.” Anthony warns as Ben’s legs fall across his lap after he’s plopped back down on the bench.

 

“If you get caught out with it don’t even bother coming back, and don't be a fucking snitch. You never saw us Haz. _Capeesh?”_

 

 _“Sì, capito.”_ Harry nods quickly as he runs off. Most of the driving was probably gonna be deep in the woods anyways.

 

“Thanks!”

 

“We’re going out when you guys come back!” Ben yells.

 

“Yeah, you can tell us all about teaching Tony the art of copulation.”

 

“ _Vaffanculo,”_ Anthony swears, telling Harry to go fuck himself in his broken Italian with a smile as they count the money together.

 

“That’s _vai a fare in culo_ and no one comes near my ass.” Harry yells over his shoulder.

 

“That’s not what I _heard._ Malik’s had some real interesting dirt on you a while ago… I didn't ask about that Arabian Prince for nothing.” Ben sings. Harry shakes his head with a smile as he runs across the field. Bad day to wear beaten up converses and tight skinny jeans.

 

Getting a car was really easy. Almost _too_ easy. As Harry calls Mikey and Liam to have them meet him at lake Logea, he can’t shake the feeling that this is gonna be the only easy thing about this day.

 

*

 

“So how long have you and Malik been a thing Li?”

 

Harry didn’t have to tell Mikey not to ask about Wolverhampton. Neither of them have ever even heard or seen Liam acknowledge Geoff’s existence once in his life. But getting all the details about him and Zayn was unavoidable.

 

Mikey ends up driving them through the woods since he’s the only one who knows the way while Liam and Harry cling to their surrounding for dear life in the back as the car jostles around. He flies over thick tree roots and rocks and weaves around trees like he’s playing a damn video game.

 

He never exactly learned how to drive _officially_. Harry makes a note to get this car washed before he returns it. Or maybe he’d just give them enough money to buy as many cars as they want cause he’s got a feeling there won’t be much left of this tiny civic by the end of the day.

 

They have no idea how Mikey can possibly know where the marsh is because they’ve been driving for the last 10 minutes, no _speeding_ actually, and the deeper into the woods they go, the darker it gets despite it being noon. The darker it gets, the harder it is to see anything. If this car falls into that deep marsh… they'd surely drown.

 

“A day maybe? Or a few weeks… it’s kind of complicated.” Liam answers his question shakily. Mikey looks at him in the mirror on the dash.

 

“Shit only a day? And you think this marsh is gonna help you cope or something?” He shakes his head sympathetically, before adding, “You know, I always had a feeling you were gay.”

 

Liam clutches the handle on the ceiling, holding in his nausea.

 

 _“Something like that,”_ he mutters.

 

“Bro what's with the cardigan?” he adds. Mikey snorts as the car comes to a screeching halt, looking back at his shaken little brother and Liam.

 

“I'm a changed man.” he smiles.

 

Harry and Liam practically flings themselves out of the death vehicle.

 

They're in a clearing, _deep_ in the woods where the trees open up and let in the sun. And there it is.

 

[ Lake Yarina - Josh Garrels ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmBV-TxTW3I)

 

Sun rays stream through the treetops, beaming on the water like spotlights on a stage. The light that cuts through this part of the woods illuminates the pieces of dust drifting in the air like sparkles, along with mayflies and dragonflies and butterflies buzzing about, the smell of sweet roses hugging the air lovingly. Only it’s not roses at all. They’re daffodils. Also known as “narcissus”. It smells of nothing but Zayn here.

 

The marsh covers a good few acres of land, stretching out far in all directions, weaving through trees where it thins out until it pools at the deepest part in front of them. The deep pool is surrounded by autumn trees with red and orange leaves and thousands of followers, floating in the still water and growing from the ground all around it.

 

All the flowers are daffodils of every possible colour and the smell of them overpowering everything else in the air almost makes Liam dizzy. It feels like Zayn is all around him. He could sit out here forever.

 

“Wow…” Harry murmurs as they walk over to it, crunching over the thin layer of frost spread across the grass, adding the touch of winter nearing in the season.

 

Despite the weather being chilly around this time and the frost, it’s so warm here. Liam even takes off his hoodie, tying it around the waist of his black tank top.

 

“It’s so _pretty.”_ Liam adds, looking around marvelously. The variety of daffodils throw up colour into the space, filling up in his eyes again like how it did when they were looking at the whole universe a few days ago, like there’s star dust everywhere here too.

 

You ever see something so beautiful it almost makes you wanna cry? Well Liam's feeling that right now and he's not typically a very emotional person. Not that he's a hard-ass. These last few days have just been leaving him feeling pretty numb. No happy no sad… just nothing at all. He might as well have been dead. Now after 3 days of feeling dead, he feels like his breath is actually being taken away. This is a place poets and daydreamers think about. The place he thinks about all the time. Maybe he seen it in a daydream of his own. He’s never really remembered his dreams at night too much but he feels like he’s seen this all before. Smelled it. Felt it. Kissed it.      

 

It’s all so _Zayn_ and it breaks his heart a little bit. A bittersweet reminder that this is where it all started. Especially when he looks down at where he’s stepped over a few ropes that are tied to the ground, ripped to shreds like someone broke free from bondage. When he leans down to look closer, he can smell the distinct punch of copper and see that the rope was probably soaked with blood at some point. Blood he's actually smelt before a few days ago. There’s a giant circle dug into the ground around a star with the rope at the centre. The ground in charred. It must've been lit on fire.  

 

He’s standing on a sacrificial pentagram. Sick deja vu crawls up his skin, replacing anything soft and dreamy his was feeling about this place just a moment ago, replacing it with macabre.

 

“Li you alright?” Harry asks him with genuine concern when he sees Liam wiping away tears. He doesn’t know where they’re coming from. They feel like someone else’s tears.

 

He knows this is where High Tide killed Zayn.

 

Harry looks at it too, holding his chin as he looks around. The opening doesn’t look natural. Trees don’t grow around in circles like this. Just like the rose bushes around their school. And marshes don’t form in woods like this.

 

“This place must be where occult groups make their sacrifices. The Enchiridion say they sacrificed their virgins and fed them to the beast. Which would be in hell.” He points to the marsh a few feet away from them.

 

“They must’ve threw them into the marsh.”

 

Liam sort of wonders what exactly happened after they sacrificed Zayn now, and why the ground is all burned up. Harry has no idea why fire would be involved for a virgin sacrifice. The book didn’t mention incineration.

 

He expected it to be a little more ugly and gruesome… like a death swamp. Cause that’s how it feels from the outside. But stepping into it now, it looks just like the painting still. This place could’ve came right out of a fairytale. He'd take this gateway over that other one in a heartbeat.

 

Mikey stays by the car while Harry and Liam walk right up to the marsh.

 

“Watch your step.” he yells at them.

 

He's right. There’s sinkholes all over the muddy ground, like maybe a layer of grass grew over the marsh a little and if they step over a bad part, they’d fall into it. It's a good thing Mikey parked so far away. They without a doubt would've plunged if he came any closer.

 

It’s a giant mirror in front of them when they get right up on the water carefully. Harry and Liam both stare down at it as they stand on the wobbly ground, looking at the trees, sky and sun in the ground as it reflects off the surface perfectly. Liam leans down as he gazes into it.

 

“Careful,” Harry warns as the ground sinks dangerously low at Liam's feet, feeling his Air Jordan’s getting soaked through. Liam nods a little, making himself float just a little bit, hovering over the ground. Not enough to be noticeable and freak Mikey out.

 

“I can’t even see past the surface,” Harry crouches down as well, only seeing himself staring back.

 

It’s a crystal clear image. A nikon on film couldn't give them a better picture than this. They could see every little detail on their faces.

 

“Is this what it feels like to have 30/30 super vision?” Harry picks his teeth with his pinky.

 

Liam shakes his head.

 

“ _Better_.” he says honestly.

 

Even with his own super vision right now, he’s never seen something so clear before in his life. Like… he can see what he _really_ looks like. He knows he didn’t look like this before. He can’t even remember what he looked like before, being half-blind and all. The water almost looks frozen in place. It really is like a painting.

 

“I told you it was still.” Mikey says from where he’s leaning on the car, smoking weed and squinting off into the distance while he waits.

 

Harry picks up a stone and tosses it across the water, trying to make it skip but as soon as it touches the surface, it disappears. A small eddy forms around it, rippling out only once. The water stills again right after.

 

“You wanna toss a boulder into it?” Harry asks jokingly.

 

Liam wants to touch it.

 

He reaches his hand out a little with the tip of his index finger and pokes the frozen surface lightly, feeling his heart pound as he watches the water reflect the moon inked on his wrist.

 

An eddy forms after he touches it, expanding outwards until the circle in the middle isn’t a reflection anymore. He can see straight through the water. Harry’s eyes bulge.

 

“Liam get away from it!” Harry pulls him away from it as the ripple continues to get bigger and bigger, revealing a whirlpool just below the surface. It looks like a drain disappearing into a waterfall when it's not still and it makes their stomachs drop to even _look_ at.      

 

The portal must be right at the bottom and making the water swirl around like this but it's so reflective on top, you can't even see past the surface. The moment you break the stillness, the sunlight shining through reveals what's really down there.

 

There’s kind of too much going on in Liam to even hear anything Harry is saying. His eyes are going far, far away as he stares down into the whirlpool in the marsh like he can see past to the very bottom of it after he disrupts the frozen surface. Harry can only see the whirlpool below but Liam’s sight is better than Harry’s right now. He can see much further down, well past the other side to the very bottom of the marsh. He’s staring into a house.

 

“Liam,” Harry shakes him.

 

“Look at me!” He yanks Liam’s head away from the marsh.

 

Liam eyes refocus on Harry’s frantic ones.

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

“ _What’s wrong?”_ Harry repeats.

 

“You almost fell in! That’s what’s wrong!”

 

Liam shakes his head, looking down at his dirty grey sweatpants now. He didn't even feel himself leaning closer to it. Just like when he looked Lux too closely. In fact, looking at this felt like looking at Lux. Like he's all around them here too.

 

“Did you not see what was down there when I moved it?” Liam asks him.

 

“Yeah a fucking tornado!”

 

“No past that. I can see the portal, it’s just right there. Look, I can show you.”

 

Liam holds his hands right on the surface, sticking his hands into the water and concentrating hard until it begins to move as he pushes the still top away with the force of his mind, pushing down into it further and further, parting the water straight down to the bottom like Moses.

 

 

When the water isn't in the way, the marsh really doesn't seem that deep at all like how everyone says it is. Like the top is just an illusion.

 

Mikey’s joint drops out of his mouth when he glances at them again from the car, freezing in shock as he watches the water beginning to part by itself. He thinks Harry must’ve laced this weed with something, reminding him not to touch his shit anymore, the fucking psychedelic alien.

 

Harry continues to watch Liam part the water until he can see the portal as well at the very bottom of the marsh, covering the ground completely.

 

It leads into a house on the other side. They both look into it in awe. It looks like a living room but if a living room was made completely out of sandy rock.

 

There's a couch. A huge flat screen TV in front of it. An xbox hooked up to that. Big fancy rugs on the ground. Paintings on the walls like vanitas of skulls and fruits sitting on tables. Paintings of angels fighting demons in war. Paintings of God touching man. Paintings of stars in space. Even one of… _Zayn,_ hanging in a small square frame above the couch. Or someone who looks like Zayn. His eyes are the wrong colour, no colour actually, and he’s got a pretty even tan. His skin is golden brown, like Aladdin. It’s such a bizarre image, Liam has to look away from it, ignoring the uneasy feeling that he’s see that face before. And not in the Enchiridion.

 

It's a legit living room with rock walls and floors. A bedroom door across the way. An open threshold into a kitchen. A hallway leading deeper into the house. An actual _house_ at the bottom of the marsh. It looks expensively decorated. And _old_ . The xbox and TV don't fit in there.

  
And then Zayn casually walks by. Actually he's not walking. He's _floating._ Gliding across the room with his legs bent at the knees, his bare feet dangling behind him. Liam's eyes bulge.

 

His hair is long again, even longer than how he's had it for the last two years, just past his shoulders and it’s pulled into a neat ponytail. And he's got a full beard somehow. He looks like he's been gone for years rather than a few days.

  
Liam dives towards it.

Harry grabs him again before he can get too far, covering his mouth before any sounds can come out, holding onto him tightly as they watch Zayn glide into the living room, wearing boxers and a white tank. He never wears stuff that exposes all his tattoos like this.

 

“ _What are you doing?”_ Liam hisses but Harry shushes him.

 

“ _You don't know if that's really Zayn.”_ Harry whispers.

 

He’s right. Liam honestly can't tell if it's Zayn or Lux… or someone else entirely for that matter. He's never seen either of them float like this before. And his hair is way too long for only a few days. And his eyes look so unfamiliar, it doesn't look like either of them. They look _dead._ Like he's looked death in the face and accepted whatever it gave to him.

 

They watch him sit on the couch and Liam swears he looks right at him at least once but… he strangely doesn't seem to notice the portal as he slumps over with his arms on his knees, playing Grand Theft Auto with his terrible posture. He looks miserable, like how he did during hell week last month. When he was suffering horribly and dying of hunger.

 

“Oh my God, he must be starving!” Liam pushes Harry away.

 

His whole body freezes again before he even knows what to do next when Louis also walks into the living room, barefoot and in sweats like he's right at home, eating a bowl of fruit. _Alive._ Well, obviously he’s not really alive. This house must be in Lust somewhere.

 

Mikey watches them from the car, totally confused as to what the hell they’re doing, staring down at the ground now that the water has seemingly come alive. He can't see the portal, only the empty bottom of the marsh. But Harry and Liam can and they can't look away from it. Neither of them hear Mikey telling them to get back in the car.

 

  
They watch Louis sit down next to Zayn on the couch as they start talking. Well, Louis’ talking. Zayn looks totally bored of it all. After not too long, he rolls his eyes and drops the video game controller, tossing it over his shoulder. His eyes turn completely black right after as he pulls Louis into his lap, which catches Louis off-guard as his food drops all over the floor. Zayn proceeds to make out with him right after, not caring about the mess he's making.  

 

Liam and Harry are statues right now.

 

Louis doesn't protest, letting him grab handfuls of his ass as he swallows Louis’ face. His fingers come up to Louis’ mouth briefly, letting Louis suck on his middle and index finger before sliding back down Louis’ pants from behind and slowly beginning to finger Louis right there in the living room. And Liam knows for sure it’s Lux.

 

Harry and Liam both watch in stunned silence, still in shock to even see Louis at all let alone see _this_.

 

After a while, Louis turns him so he's lying back on the arm of the couch, kissing down his chest as he takes off his shirt and starts to palm over his tented boxers. His black eyes watch Louis start to suck him with his mouth hung open. And Liam can't watch anymore.

 

He bolts away from the marsh so he can throw up on the side and not into the portal.

  
Now this isn't some hellish nightmare anymore. This is real. Now he stops numbing himself. Now he lets it all out in a boiling pile of black putrid, taking all the surge of raw emotion and shoving it out of his body. As he upchucks, he feels something else changing in his blood as well. And it’s _angry._

As soon as it's all out, he stares at the mess pulsating on the ground, feeling his chest heaving harshly and his insides changing. He let's his blood run ice cold, that pit in his gut spreading out all over his body like it did when he fought Stan and his gang only this time, he doesn't stop it.

Harry is at his side in no time, leaning down next to him.

  
"Hey," he starts gently.

 

When Liam looks up, Harry falls back in terror. Liam's eyes are totally black too. The pupil has just taken over it all. Even the white so it’s just two shiny black eyes.

He stands up without a word, stepping over Harry and stalking back to the marsh. Harry sits on the floor, temporarily struck with fear as he breathes shakily, feeling his heart rate trying to run away from him.

 

“Yo,”

 

  
Harry jumps when Mikey touches him, popping Harry's red headband against his face so it snaps painfully. He breaks him out of his shock.

 

“I know I’m sort of off my ass right now but… can you explain to me what the _fuck_ is going on right now?”

 

Mikey is so oblivious. And Harry is gonna make sure he stays oblivious. They shouldn’t have come here with him cause if he gets dragged to hell… Harry can’t even imagine himself living without Mikey.

 

He looks back at Liam as he continues to stare down into the marsh.

 

“I’ll… explain later.”

 

He goes back over to Liam, careful not to touch him as he's obviously seething if his pupils have blown up enough to overtake his eyes.

 

They aren't on the couch anymore so Harry can assume they've taken things to the bedroom across from the living room. The marsh crashes back down finally, the top going still almost immediately as the portal is concealed again.

 

“I’m gonna take a wild guess here and say that Lux may be the reason Zayn hasn’t come back yet.” Harry says gently. Liam closes his eyes as his chest heaves.

 

“ _I’m gonna rip him out of Zayn's body a KILL him!”_

 

“Whoa wait!” Harry stops him from diving into the water. Liam looks at Harry as his pupils shrink a little finally so he doesn’t look like an actual demon anymore even though he’s still angry.

 

Ever since that bath in the Acheron river, aside from learning how to pull out and clean his own aether, he’s been learning how to stop his pit from exploding inside him. But it’s harder to control when he’s feeling his insides churning with emotion. Especially _anger._

“We can't just jump in there without thinking through this first! We don't know what's down there. This isn't some house in Manningtree Liam, that's _hell_ on the other side of this portal.”

 

Liam shrugs.

 

“So?”

 

Harry laughs for a moment, shaking his head.

 

“Okay I don't think you're fully taking in what _hell_ is right now-”

 

“I'm a demon in case you’ve forgotten?”

 

“Half-demon.” Harry reminds him.

 

“And there’s way more demons down there with way more power than you. You can’t just swim down there without a plan! What did Charon and I say about making a plan before going and getting yourself KILLED! We need to consider what we’re dealing with right now!”

 

“Excuse me.” Mikey cuts them off as he comes over, complete and utter bafflement all over his face.

 

“Sorry to interrupt your serious discussion here but _what the fuck!?”_

 

Liam gets up, starting to pace around the unstable ground as Harry watches him anxiously.

 

“Liam just try to use logic right now. We don't know if killing Lux with kill Zayn-”

 

“He such a fucking _LIAR!”_ Liam hisses as he paces, ignoring Harry.

 

“Making it sound like he hated Louis and he'd never _leave_ me again, I HATE him!”

 

“And again, I have to ask,” Mikey holds his hips.

 

_“What the fuck?”_

 

Harry covers his face, feeling like there’s chaos all around him and no one is trying to listen to ration. “No one” being Liam cause he’s hung up over Lux fucking Louis when there’s much bigger issues right now.

 

“Mikey _please,”_ he looks at his confused brother.

 

“Can we like… have some privacy?”

 

Mikey shrugs with his mouth hung open, throwing up his hands lamely.

 

“Sure man whatever.” He almost laughs, beside himself.

 

Harry drags Liam to sit in the car so they can discuss this without Mikey nearby.

 

“You and Mikey need to go home. You can take this car back to Tony. I'm going down there and I'm not coming back without Zayn.”

 

Harry takes a deep breath for a moment, trying to get them back on stable ground.

 

“Liam you have to listen me right now. Aside from the fact that going down there like this without a plan is borderline suicide, there’s also a curse we can’t break yet because the only person who can break the curse according to the Enchiridion is ZAYN. If you go in there all willy-nilly and reckless, you’re gonna risk getting BOTH of you killed and I’m not about to let you act out a real-life Romeo and Juliet.”

 

“So you expect me to act like Lux isn’t fucking Louis’ ghost and just go home and do nothing?” Liam huffs.

 

“I can’t leave knowing he’s in HELL Harry. You read that stupid book. If he stays there he’ll be trapped forever! Zayn told to me he wasn't gonna let that happen yet! And I can’t let it happen at all. I just can’t. He was crying at just the _thought_ of it.”

 

“I expect you to use logic and stop acting on impulse because of your emotion! Don’t let this shit in your stomach cloud your judgement and control you again.”

 

Liam shakes his head, staring out the window with his arms crossed as he tries to numb his emotion again like he has been for the last 3 days and think logically like how Harry says. Cause he’s right. This will never end if they just keep falling into random portals that lead to them almost dying. There’s only so many times you can cheat death until it finally catches up to you.

 

Harry watches his pupil shrink to normal size.

 

“Okay there you go. I know you’re not dumb Liam. I call you a dumbass out of love but you’re not. Just use your head right now. Your evil gut isn’t what you listen to ever, alright? That’s not you.”

 

Liam nods as he cast aside his emotion completely, which in-turn diminishes the impulse to dive into the marsh and rip out Lux’s heart. And Louis’ too... just cause he’s a dick. Even if he’s already dead.

 

“Okay so I’ve went through the Enchiridion multiple times…. And also I translated the lyrics to Inferno backwards, and I think I figured out where exactly Lux came from and how the fire started.” Harry starts as Liam listens, staring out the window and watching Mikey pace around the marsh.

 

“It’s a satanic ritual. Whatever the fuck Eggsy is, it isn’t a witch. Witches aren’t agents of satan. They’re actual devil worshippers. Whatever they ask for, they can get it as long as they do the ritual to spill enough fresh blood on the land and sacrifice a virgin. The fire caught cause of the portal is opened down there to an actual inferno,” Harry gestures out the windshield.

 

Liam feels like he’s already gone back in time, living in the bloody 16th century right now.

 

 _“Luxuria_ can mean lust in Latin. Or luxury but, we're gonna go with lust for now. Narcissus lusted after his reflection in that very marsh where the inferno is just below. The one that he “fell” into which I’m not so sure he even fell into it.” Harry points to the marsh again where he spent God knows how much time staring into hell.

 

“You think he tried to go to hell on purpose?”

 

Harry shrugs.

 

“I dunno, maybe? Maybe he tried to kill himself, who knows. But Lux said he's never left hell before this, right? Cause he was on the other side of the marsh. In Lust. And he’s bodiless. That means he can't walk around on the surface unless he’s in Zayn's body. Based off that and everything you've told me about seeing Zayn's reflection moving and talking to him, I'm gonna take wild guess and say Narcissus purged his lust into his reflection in the marsh during the demonic transference. Lux is his reflection he was staring at. It’s just… conscious. That’s why he said he’s not a boy. You can’t gender an emotion. Or a reflection.”

 

Liam bites his lip as he thinks.

 

“What do you mean? He’s a demon. How can a demon be a reflection?”

 

Harry gestures to Liam’s stomach.

 

“The same way a human can.”

 

Liam feels his gut absently.

 

“His… pit?”

 

Harry nods.

 

“Whatever this shit is, that’s what makes you a demon. That's what makes him a demon too. It has to manifest from somewhere right? He didn’t just spit his emotions out like he was brushing his teeth, he purged them into something. He lusted after his reflection so it makes sense. Without the lust, he must a reflection still. Just like without yours, you're just a boy. Your pit turned you from a human into a certain kind of demon known as a half-blood. His turned him from Nars’ reflection into a certain kind demon. _An incubus._ Charon said not all sins are demonic. Only the 7 deadliest. After demonic transference, purging deadly sins out of your spirit into hell must turn them into different kinds of _demons_.”

 

“All we have to do is turn him back into the _reflection_. We have to… destroy his PIT!” Liam thinks out loud.

 

“YES!” Harry smiles wide.

 

“Destroy his pit before the full moon, turn him back into a lifeless reflection. Destroy _your pit,_ turn you back into an innocent 17-year-old cherub. Close this fucking portal FOREVER so satanic witches stop sacrificing everyone in our poor town and go back to the night of the fire so none of this shit follows us. Everyone lives happily ever after. The fucking end.”

 

Liam nods his head along as everything starts to align in his mind.

  
  
“Okay… the full moon is in 12 days and that's when he'll be the weakest so-”

 

 

Mikey knocks on the window as he glares into the car he's locked out of.

 

 _“What the fuck!?”_ he yells from the outside. Harry holds up his finger with a tight, apologetic expression.

 

“Just hold on!”

 

He looks back at Liam then.

 

While they continue to try to formulate a plan in car for a few minutes about what to do next, Mikey gives up on trying to understand what the fuck is going on.

 

Hearing them talking about demons and killing Zayn… he was too high for this shit.

 

He walks back over to the marsh curiously. It's been years since he’s seen this thing. He crouches down over the edge as he stares into it, wondering how it moved. He’s never seen it move before.

 

“And you can't forget that Lux is more or less a thousand year old DEMON. Confronting him isn't gonna be the smartest thing to do. Especially when he's _hungry_ and in his domain down there _._ ” Harry continues.

 

“Lux can’t eat me.” Liam shakes his head.

 

“You don’t know that-”

 

“No… he can’t. We have the same pit. If he touches it, he’ll be sick. When he touched mine with his, I got really sick. I don’t think demons can eat each other. He has to eat human… _flesh…”_ Liam’s thought trails off as he gets distracted by something else in front of them.

 

Mikey is leaning down towards the marsh.

 

“Oi…” Liam squints, pointing at the ground he's standing on. Which he doesn't notice is sinking very _low_.

 

Harry’s eyes bulge.

 

“MIKEY!” Liam yells out the window. He doesn't seem to hear him.

 

The ground caves a little under Mikey. Harry jolts as his heart drops, seeing his entire life flashing before his eyes as he watches his brother nearly falling into _hell_.

 

He hoots the car horn frantically. His foot accidentally reves on the gas pedal in the process, making the car lurk forward.

 

The next instant is full of two boys screaming in the car as it kicks up into the air after speeding over a rock, straight forward and upwards before slamming on the weak ground.

 

The car flying towards Mikey finally breaks his trance as he dives out of the way onto stable land… right before the car stops on the soggy bed of grass. Liam holds his breath, the same as Harry as they slowly moves to open the door to get out of the car. As soon as they touch the handle, the ground cave, finally giving out and letting the car sink into marsh instantly.

 

“WINDOW!” Harry yells as water floods into Liam's open window that he frantically rolls up until they are totally submerged and sent into the most terrifying car riding episode since Inception.

 

Harry holds into the wheel, screaming as they’re whipped around in the tornado of water. Liam hands hold onto the ceiling as he stands up, a panic attack deciding to overtake him.

 

The marsh turns out to be only a few feet deep in actuality, no bigger than a community pool. It is deep but… not bottomless. So they touch the portal in a matter of seconds, sending the car soaring straight through it after spinning around uncontrollably.

 

They instantly crash on the other side.

 

*

 

Liam’s never been knocked out in a car accident before. Maybe he’s been in a few self-induced comas but never from something like a car wreck. Unless you count the state his life is in right now.

 

_“Lima?”_

 

His name sounds like it’s coming from a few planets away from him somewhere as he starts to come to.

 

_“Baby can you hear me?”_

 

Liam blinks up at the ceiling in a daze. It seems like it’s twirling in circles at the moment. And so are the faces leaning over him until his eyes adjusts and the many faces become just one pretty face. With lots of beard and long, long luscious black hair.

 

“ _Z…?”_ He mumbles.

 

He pulls Liam into him tightly. Liam looks over his shoulder, still trying to find some memory of where the fuck he is and what is happening. They’re in a bedroom he’s never seen before, sitting in a bed he’s never felt before. But the arms around him is something he’s always felt and it’s been far too long since he’s felt this.

 

It’s very warm and cozy. The bed is pretty nice too.

 

Soft white silk sheets with comfy pillows and comforters are wrapping Liam up like a burrito. There’s a small desk across from them and a wardrobe sitting in place against the wall, which is made of stone and painted a pale rosy colour that maybe used to be pink a long time ago.

 

A vase of bright yellow daffodils sit at the desk and contrast against the rose walls and the smell of them is so nostalgic that it makes Liam feel safe here. The flowers actually have a few little butterflies sitting in them, blending into it like bids. They sit in front of a tall window with wispy white drapes cascading it as sunlight pours through the curtain like the sun might be out still.

 

He has no idea where he is… until he looks out of the opened bedroom door into a familiar living room where Harry and Louis are talking on the couch. Anthony’s car is crashed straight down into the floor next to them.

 

His memory finally unveils, seeing himself being launched into the ground and sent into a vortex all over again.

 

 _“Oh my god,”_ Liam gasps as he jolts like he's being ripped out of his sleep all of the sudden, pulling Zayn back by the sides of his t-shirt in shock.

 

“We _crashed!”_

 

“You are absolutely insane!” Zayn hits him in his chest as he frowns, rubbing down Liam’s chest to smooth it over even though it wasn't really that hard.

 

“I told you not to follow me.”

 

Zayn’s eyes look _crazy_ weird. There’s grey scattered across the brown, right across half his iris, making them look pale and hazel. Like… he’s losing himself to Lux already.

 

This is the freaky Lux/Zayn-there-at-the-same-time thing when he doesn’t know who he’s actually talking to. Lux looking at him like this and touching him like this makes him want to hide under the cover.

 

He wanted to kill him a little while ago and now he just wants to squirm under his gaze. His hands are so hot… it feels like they're burning through Liam's t-shirt. But it doesn't hurt. He knows it should. But his skin takes to the heat like water to a flower, swallowing it and craving for more like he might want to take his shirt off so his skin can feel it fully.

 

Zayn must notice that Liam’s looking at Lux instead of him so he closes his eyes and leans across Liam’s lap for a moment, laying with his belly over Liam’s legs as he reaches down the side of the bed.

 

Zayn’s whole body feels like it's burning up, s _corching_. Liam's almost afraid he's on brink of combustion. Actually, this whole room feels like there's fire hanging in the air. He seriously doesn't understand how he can breathe right now. He should be suffocating. But it opens up his lungs wide. Like breathing hellfire. It feels good in his lungs, along with the smell of these daffodils. Hell to a demon must feel like heaven to an angel.  

 

Zayn pulls out a mirror finally from the side and looks into it briefly.

 

His body draped across Liam instantly cools off.

 

_“You keep me in here for more than 10 minutes and I will fuck him in your SLEEP!”_

 

_“Luxuria chup kar!”_

 

Zayn argues as he dangles off the bed with his bum sticking all in Liam's face.

 

Liam can’t tell which voice is Zayn. Neither of them are really speaking English. He doesn’t know what language he’s speaking right now. It sounds almost like Italian so it must be Latin.

 

He pushes his ass out of his face, flipping Zayn over on his back in the middle if his argument, rubbing up his stomach underneath his shirt as he leans over him to look him in the eyes closely, darting between them almost frantically.

 

And it's just Zayn. His face is tired and his fully grown beard makes him look older than what he is. But it’s Zayn and he’s actually alive and in Liam's actual arms right now, laying in his lap and not that faint tether he's been clinging to for the past few days.

 

But Zayn's not looking at Liam. He's looking past Liam.

 

Liam takes the hand mirror from Zayn without looking at what might be in it, sitting on his pillow carefully and lifting Zayn back up with wide eyes, holding his waist.  

 

“Are you gonna stare at me or say something?” Zayn crosses his eyes at him.

 

Liam shakes his head slowly.

 

“Considering that I haven’t seen my best friends face in like 3 years… I think I’m gonna just stare for a bit.”

 

He touches a wispy strand of hair falling in front of his face, moving it behind his ear, holding his hand there.

 

_“Are you really Zayn?”_

 

Zayn’s hands come up Liam's shoulders to his neck as his face pinches, closing his eyes and sighing deeply.

 

“Lima I’m sorry… I didn’t want to leave you like that and I swear I didn't forget about you but there just something I have to do before I can go back-”

 

“I don’t care,” Liam shakes his head slowly.

 

“Tell me after I get done kissing you.”

 

[ Kali Uchis - Perfect ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIqVCJWSoeE)

 

He pulls his entire life back into him again, burying Zayn in the home he's made from his arms as they fall backwards on the bed, making Zayn laugh when Liam nudges his neck and smells his hair. He lets his hands wander through this crazy long hair he’s got now. It really is past his shoulders as he tugs off his hair tie and lets it fall through his hands, soft like flower petals. He missed Zayn's long hair. He missed _Zayn._

 

“You look really good babe, I missed you.” Zayn sighs as he smiled, closing his eyes.

 

 _“Yeah?”_ Liam utters.

 

Zayn nods. He looks so tired. His bags have bags, the dark circles seep deep in his skin. He looks like he hasn’t slept in months. He can’t even keep his eyes open.

 

“You always look good. I like you in black.”

 

“ _You smell so good.”_ Liam utters in his hair.

 

“Like fresh flowers mixed with sweat.”

 

 _“Sweat?!”_ Zayn shrieks as he looks at him again. Liam laughs.

 

“Good sweat. Like the kind I licked off your back a few days ago.”

 

 _“What a freak,”_ Zayn scoffs, but he can't hide his blushing cheeks.

 

Liam’s heart squeezes a little at that word but he smiles anyways. Zayn obviously doesn’t mean that in a mean way. And he always makes Liam smile. He felt like he was starting to forget what he sounded like up there. Like… Liam was slowly fading away into a void.

 

Zayn pushes Liam’s chest back so they lay side by side but Liam still keeps him close with his fingers tiptoeing around Zayn’s waist, rubbing up and down the center of his back and pressing into his backbone and making him shiver as he leans closer.

 

“Have I ever told you how much I love your hands?” Zayn asks as his nose brushes against Liam's, batting his long lashes against his ticklishly.

 

Liam shakes his head, wrapping his arms around Zayn's waist completely now so there's not an inch of space between them anymore.

 

“I think…” Liam kisses his lips lightly.

 

“There's a lot of things…” he kisses him again in between his pauses.

 

“We have to tell each other…”

 

He lays his head down on the pillow then as Zayn kisses him back softly, letting their lips do all their catching up for as long as they please, laughing a little every time Liam nips at his bottom lip, chasing the taste of him.

 

Liam typically talks really fast but the way he kisses Zayn just feels like he's taking all the time in the universe while Zayn moves his hands up his chest to his neck, brushing his thumbs over Liam’s cheeks, feeling their skin and tongues smoothing against each other everywhere they’re touching, trying to rub off on one another.

 

This is all either of them could ever want if life was fair right now. If they had their way, they'd never get out of this bed. Even if it's somewhere in hell.

 

In between their long-lost kisses, they stare at one another, holding each pause to take in the details once again. Zayn still can never look him in the eye, turning away when Liam lifts his scruffy chin but he can’t hide his blooming cheeks.

 

Even though it's only been 3 days, it's still overwhelming to have this again.

 

Zayn explains to Liam that hell exists on a lower plane under Earth’s surface called an etheric plane, where time behaves like a liquid. It’s inconsistent, stretching out very thinly here and acts as if everything is in slow motion. So he could be here for 24 hours… or 24 years and go back to the surface and find that only 24 seconds have actually gone by. Meaning while Liam hasn't seen Zayn in 3 days, Zayn hasn't seen Liam in _3 months_ . Or years. Zayn doesn’t even know because of how inconsistent it is. It’s just been a really long time since everything slows down here _._ Which explains why he looks like a caveman right now.

 

“A beautiful caveman.” Liam clarifies. Zayn makes an offended face.

 

“Oh sorry, I know you don’t like anyone to call you beautiful. But I don’t know many words so...”

 

“It’s okay I’m pretty conceited. You can call me beautiful.” Zayn smiles jokingly as Liam laughs.

 

“Maybe not the cave part… you always say I’m fucking cavernous. I don’t like it.”

 

“Cause you keep deep secrets inside you. But you can’t hide them from me. I’m always gonna find you.”

 

Their lips graze against each other, no pressure at all.

 

 _“What kind of deep secrets…”_ Zayn’s hand crawls under Liam’s shirt at his waist.

 

_“Like the fact that you hear everyone call you beautiful all so much, it virtually means nothing to you anymore…. That’s why you grew your hair so long...”_

 

Liam leans towards his ear, weaving his finger in the hair across the back of Zayn’s neck as he traces over his fantail tattoo, making Zayn shiver.

 

“ _It’s full of secrets.”_ He whispers.

 

A noise resembling a faint gasp escapes Zayn’s throat as he feels Liam touch where he once had another, smaller tattoo he covered a million years ago out of anger… bringing back a few memories of other things he regrets doing in anger that day. He hair feels like it’s full of regrets more than secrets. How Liam insinuates knowing such personal things without him even having ever told him makes Zayn nervous.

 

He pulls his hand off his neck as he looks at his lips.

 

“Umm… _okay,”_ He laughs a little with tension in his throat.

 

“Maybe that’s true… but you’re not just anyone saying I’m beautiful. Hearing you say sweet things to me always makes me feel good and I haven’t heard your voice in 3 months. So keep talking.”

 

“Okay.” Liam nods before launching into a detailed summary about the last 3 action packed days while Zayn listens.

 

Safaa sending them through a dead moon and into the Acheron River. He and Harry going on different astral planes together lately. Getting an asbo for almost killing Olly, Stan, and Calvin. Mikey wearing a fucking cardigan. Everything. Well… almost everything.

 

He leaves out the parts about possibly going to live in Wolverhampton or being clinically diagnosed with D.I.D after spending 2 days in a literal asylum or the psychotherapy but he tells Zayn everything else, leaving his mouth hung open in disbelief pretty much the entire time.  

 

Liam has a feeling Zayn has been living life much more dastardly with his time in hell than what Liam has on the surface. But he’s not as eager to talk about his than he is to listen to Liam. In fact, Zayn doesn’t say anything about what he’s been doing down here at all.

 

“Remember when I got my first asbo?” Zayn laughs.

 

“Do I remember you punching Andy Samuels in the face at lunch last year and getting arrested? Yes.” Liam sighs.

 

He hated when Zayn got into fights like that. He broke Andy’s nose. It never mattered how big they were compared to him. He always fought dirty so their size was a non-factor to his quick-witted skill.

 

“He “accidentally” _purposefully_ stepped on your fucking glasses and refused to pay for it. He paid for it after didn’t he?”

 

Liam shakes his head as he pulls Zayn into his chest.

 

“You’re such a _bad boy_.” He smiles.

 

“ _Only for you bean.”_ He murmurs sleepily.

 

Whether it was 3 days or 6 months or 30 years, all this fucking time has been feeling like they’re just running around the loop of a big circle.

 

For a while, they’re going in opposite directions, getting further and further away from each other until they're on total opposite sides of the entire world, opposite planes of existence, unable to see the other person at all. But eventually they get to the moment when the circle comes back around and they come back together for one _fleeting_ instant. And that moment they’re together always feels so goddamn short. Like they're just running right past each other.

 

Even as Liam looks at Zayn with him now, he hates the feeling that when he blinks, he’ll be miles away from him all over again. So he doesn't blink. But stopping himself from blinking won't stop what's happening to them.

 

They can't keep doing this race of seeing how far they can go before they actually never see each other ever again.

 

 _“You're heart's beating really fucking fast.”_ Zayn whispers as Liam buries his hands in Zayn's hair.

 

He lays his head over Zayn’s.

 

_“So is yours.”_

 

Zayn frowns a little as he looks at the clock on the wall across from them. They’re running out of time. He has to tell Liam now.

 

“Lima... that’s not _my heart-_ ”

 

His words get lost in his mouth as he gasps when Liam tugs at the back of his hair, kissing up his neck. There Liam goes with the hair pulling again.

 

 

"Oh," Zayn jolts as he laughs, baring his neck more.

 

 

"That feels... quite nice,"

 

 

His hand slowly moves over Zayn's crotch. Zayn’s hand frantically scrambles for the mirror behind him as he feels himself slipping away as he's moving too much but, it falls over the side of the bed, far away from him as it hits the ground and the chain to it breaks.

 

He pulls Liam’s hand out of his hair as he laughs.

 

“You’re obsessed with this fucking hair.”

 

“Of course I am. I loved pulling on your long hair until Lux cut it. So I haven’t touched you in 3 days and I find you with all this amazing hair and you expect me not to touch it?”

 

“I’m cutting it again.”

 

“No, please don’t! You have to let me pull it forever.” Liam laughs as he begs, burying his face in his daffodil scented hair.

 

He turns on his back as he thinks about that, resting his hand over Liam's on his stomach.

 

“You’ve been on quite the explosive journey just to nearly die getting here. I personally think you've earned the right to do whatever you want to Zayn.”

 

Liam squints a little.

 

“... _huh?”_

 

He squeezes his eyes closed as he starts laughing silently, one of those laughs that comes straight from your guts and hits you too hard to make any noise.

 

“ _You crashed through the CEILING! Mate… I almost had a fucking heart attack!”_ he wheezes.

 

Liam snorts, prompting his elbow up on his pillow as he leans his head in his hand.

 

“You think Harry trying to kill me is funny do you?”

 

He shakes his head from side.

 

“He tried to kill me with a car didn't he?” He sighs. Liam laughs.

 

“It’s okay. I accepted his apology a few days ago. I need to put a tarp over that thing or something. Shit _always_ falls through it.”

 

Liam lays down on his chest again, tracing down his ribs with his index finger, looking up at the swirls of bulbous rose swirls painted on ceiling. He’s lost a lot of weight.

 

_“Like what?”_

 

He splays his fingers across Liam’s back, moving up and down leisurely up to the little hairs on the back of his neck then back down.  

 

 _“Plastic balls… animals… shards of glass that have nearly blinded me… flying cars with pretty boys in them… dead bodies that have been stabbed a billion times by stupid witches…”_ He murmurs.

 

Liam looks up at him a little.

 

 _“Bodies?”_ He says into his chin, feeling his beard scratch against his face as he kisses him. Kissing Zayn with a beard was something Liam would really love getting used to.

 

He nods with their lips still attached. He does this weird thing with his tongue, curling up the roof of Liam’s mouth and flicking down after his lips slurp around Liam's tongue, making his stomach burst with flutters. Liam laughs in a lost breath as he pulls off, holding his arm across his waist so he won’t fall off the bed in surprise.

 

“What was that?” Liam blinks down at him with wide eyes.

 

“A tasty trick I’ll show you.” He smiles.

 

Liam looks in adoration at how long his eyelashes look cast down his cheeks when his eyes are closed like this, tracing over them while he's talking.  

 

“People throw shit in here cause it looks like a bottomless pit from the outside. So they have to get rid of their trash and sacrifices somewhere right?”

 

Liam snorts as he traces over his eyes. That was… _dark._

 

“But it’s not a bottomless pit. You’re here.”

 

He relaxes again. Nothing else even matters but this, being here with his demon boyfriend in hell after a lifetime of feeling numb without him. Life on the surface felt like hell. Like he’s at the very worst point in his life. This feels like Liam’s in the same place at a different point in time. A happy one.

 

“ _You’re right here and you’re okay.”_ He sighs, feeling himself being lulled to sleep almost as he listens to Zayn's heartbeat, feeling it thump steadily at his ear. He loves this sound. The sound of him being alive.

 

_“Li… I’m stuck in hell. I’m pretty fucking far from okay. And you can’t be here.”_

 

Liam stills a little.

 

_“What?”_

 

“You have to go back home.”

 

When he looks up again, Lux is right in front of him now with his eyes open. No colour at all but a few little specs.

 

Liam sits up immediately, falling back against the wardrobe when he stands up, feeling his heart beating out of control and his thoughts scattering, gasping shakily as his chest starts to squeeze tight.

 

He doesn't know why his body's natural reaction is to panic cause he's not scared at all. More like a very intense epiphany slammed into him when they made eye contact. He kind of had a feeling he was talking to Lux when he said “Zayn” but… he didn’t want to let go of the illusion of having Zayn again quite so soon.

 

Obviously this isn't the first time he's seen Lux. But it's different now that he knows exactly what Lux is, seeing him and Zayn at the same time is a total mind-fuck.

 

Try to imagine seeing your reflection climb outside of it’s mirror and walk and talk without you in 3 dimensions instead of 2. The type of mind-fuck you’d need to be on acid to see right?

 

Now take it another step forward.

 

Zayn’s reflection ripped out of the mirror and shoved into his body where it can only be seen through his eyes. That was next level mind-fuck. Like an orgy on an astral plane in the 4th dimension where all rules of reality are burned up and cast aside.

 

Lust is an emotion. A reflection is… hell, Liam doesn't even know what a reflection is now that he thinks about it. An arrangement of light? He doesn't have a clue. But he knows that Lux is both and he shouldn't exist. It's _impossible._ But he does. He does and he’s right here in front of Liam’s eyes. If he ever sees Lux, _really sees him outside of Zayn…_ Liam is 100% certain he will go into cardiac arrest.

 

Lux stands on his knees and holds his hands up innocently.

 

“Okay _calm down_ , you can kiss me… it’s cool,” He says carefully with a small shrug of the shoulders to the side.

 

“I’m not gonna hurt you. I can't stress enough that I'm not gonna fucking hurt you and I’m sick of repeating myself.”

 

Liam grabs Lux’s wrists as he looks him in the eye full-on, right into his body, startling Lux now with his abruptness.

 

_“Liam-”_

 

“Zayn!”

 

Lux snatches his wrists away from Liam as he glares.

 

“I'm not _Zayn-”_

 

“I’m not _talking_ to you.”

 

“Well Zayn can't fucking hear you. _I'm_ in control right now.”

 

“Let me talk to Zayn!”

 

“Liam,” Lux closes his eyes as he sighs.

 

“He's gonna tell you the same thing I just did. We’re staying here. You have to go home.”

 

“Let me talk to Zayn _now_.” He repeats firmly.

 

Lux’s hands drop as he rolls his grey eyes, shaking his head at Liam and getting up. _Floating up_ actually. His legs bend at the knees as they dangle behind him while he floats towards Liam like a ghost.  

 

“ _You’re so fucking STUBBORN. You don't listen to anything anyone fucking tells you to fucking do.”_ he grumbles as he glides to the wardrobe, shoving Liam away from it so he can open the door.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

“You want Zayn to forcefully kick you out, that's what you're gonna get.” He tells him. As soon as the door opens, his eyes roll backwards as Zayn comes back. His feet touch the ground finally.

 

 _“Stop fucking stalling! Make him leave NOW before someone tries to kill him!”_ Another voice comes from the wardrobe.

 

“ALRIGHT, get off my dick already!” Zayn yells at it. There must be a mirror on the door.

 

Watching Zayn talk to a mirror was just a creepy as hearing it talk back to him. He almost forgets what the voice in the mirror sounds like when he stops talking. It sounds like Zayn but… not really at all. He can’t even remember what he sounds like, only what he said.

 

“Zayn what the hell is going on?!”

 

Zayn pinches the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes close. As he stands there, Louis’ voice chimes from the living room for him.

 

“Z’s dumping you for me, love. We were kind of in the middle of something when you crashed in… literally.” He calls out with a smile from where he's playing video games on the couch next to Harry, who hits Louis in the shoulder.

 

“We’re rotting in hell together for the next eternity. Soz, you're not invited.”

 

 _“Shut UP Louis!”_ Zayn hisses as he lifts up his hand, making the door slam shut from across the room, cutting off Louis’ annoying laughing.

 

“What’s that mean?” Liam asks slowly.

 

Zayn grabs his hands and brings him to the bed as they sit down.

 

“Okay just listen to me. Don't interrupt.”

 

Liam pulls his hands away when the grey mixes into his eyes again after he leaves the mirror.

 

“When we left your house, we came here to find out how to reverse what I did to you. There's a huge library here with loads of books about half-bloods that belongs to Ace. But I ended up finding out some shit about this place that I have to fix before I can leave-”

 

“Who’s Ace?”

 

Zayn closes his eyes, shaking his head quickly.

 

“Acedia, he's… don't worry about him, just _listen_.”

 

“Where are we exactly…?” Liam can't help interrupting. He's trying to understand the full picture. Zayn doesn't yell at him for interrupting.

 

His head drops as he laughs a little.

 

“I'm sorry! I'm just really bloody _confused_.”

 

“It's fine.” Zayn sighs.

 

“This is my house in the middle of Lust, in the eye of the storm.”

 

He holds Liam's hand as he pulls him to the tall window, showing him what's outside.

 

Beyond the curtain, violent winds whip around red dust and rain in a whirlwind of a storm. The sunlight isn't sunlight at all. The entire sky is actually engulfed in fire. It pelts against the open window but it doesn't come inside, as if there's some kind of invisible barrier.

 

Charon wasn't exaggerating. It really is a harrowing storm. They would’ve died if they tried to voyage through this 3 days ago.

 

“Lust is a big fat cesspool of hellfire spinning around in a continuous loop. This house was built in the very middle where the storm can't touch it. Cause nothing touches the eye of a storm. That’s what mine and your pits are designed after. So if it touches you, it won’t hurt you out there. But it’s like, you know... scorching hot if you’re not used to it.”

 

He pokes Liam’s stomach briefly, making him jerk to the side ticklishly.

 

“This stuff in your tummy isn’t exactly made of hellfire but it’s the only thing in the universe that is as strong as lust itself. Hot and passionate with absolute loss of control… ergo I live and breathe _lust_. You… sort of can. I came here to get it out of your body but the only way to do that-”

 

A loud clap of thunder shakes Liam as the sky lights up, like a bomb just went off out there. Both he and Liam flinch. It makes Liam wonder if Lux is afraid of thunder too. He’d understand why. If he had to live in this kind of thunder all the time, he’d probably be afraid of it too.

 

“What is that?” Liam gasps.

 

“It’s like endless thunder. Only it's made out of wild conflagration instead of lightning.”

 

“Conflagration?” Liam repeats dumbly.

 

“A _firestorm_ Lima.” He sighs.

 

Liam nods even though he wants to squirm as Zayn looks him dead in the eye finally. Cause it's not just Zayn.

 

They're both talking at the same time and it's making it hard for Liam to focus as he just stares.

 

_“Li,”_

 

He pinches Liam’s arm, making him jump.

 

“OW!” Liam pulls away from him as he glares.

 

“You can't do that here.”

 

“Do what? Why did you pinch me!?”

 

“You can’t leave your body here. Not even a little. It's dangerous. I'm not the only demon in this house and I can't keep my eyes on you at all times. Just try to stay focused on staying in your body while you're here _please.”_

 

He rubs his forearm in annoyance, looking away from Lux’s eyes burning holes into Liam's as he sits back on the bed, away from the window. At least he knows why it feels like everything around him is burning as he fans his shirt collar, looking around the heated room.

 

“Have you ever heard of air conditioning? It's 5,000 fucking degrees in here.”

 

He snorts as he sits next to Liam.

 

“Air conditioning would probably suffocate me.” he laughs.

 

“Well I feel like I’m about to fucking suffocate,” Liam feels like he has asthma again.

 

Lux looks at Liam’s chest, seeing how uneven he’s breathing. He raises his hands in front of him as he approaches Liam with caution.

 

“ _Okay,_ don’t panic. Just inhale and exhale steadily like you’ve been doing.” Lux says carefully.

 

“Obviously that's what I'm trying to do!” Liam snaps as he gasps, starting to panic now that he knows he’s not actually breathing air right now. It’s too thick, like trying to inhale nothing. Cause there’s nothing in the air. They’re in a void in space and Liam can’t breathe.

 

“Liam you're thinking too hard about it. You're not breathing hellfire right now, it's just empty space. You can’t breathe because you _think_ you can’t breathe.”

 

“What the hell am I supposed to think when there’s no air!?” Liam practically shouts, the more Lux says not to think about the fact that he's not breathing air, the more the panic and suffocation rises in him.

 

Liam closes his eyes but behind his eyelids, but it make the heat feels even worse… like he's running through that burning house all over again.

 

He holds his throat as he chokes.

 

_“I need… air!”_

 

“Liam listen to me.” Lux gets right in front of him, crossing his legs like a pretzel as he floats above the ground. Liam looks at him as his breath gets stuck in his throat.

 

 _“Lux I can't breathe-”_ Liam chokes up.

 

_“Lima,”_

 

Liam squints at Lux as he continues to lose his breath, feeling him leaning into Liam. And this is the part where they kiss.

 

There’s a smack across the face instead.

 

His mouth falls open as he blinks to the side, feeling the sting on his cheek resonating there in disbelief for a few seconds before he slowly looks back at Lux. It wasn't a hard slap but… that still just happened.  

 

“ _Did you really just_ -”

 

Lux slaps him again, still not that hard but hard enough to still sting in the same spot.

 

Liam holds his cheek now, looking back at Lux with a shocked expression as he grins in Liam’s face.

 

“Why did you-”

 

Lux goes to slap him again but Liam snatches his wrist up this time, yanking him to his feet as he stands up and pinning him against the flaming window roughly.

 

“WHY ARE YOU SLAPPING ME!?”

 

“I _barely_ touched you. That’s what they do on TV right? This is psychological. You’re breathing right now.”

 

Liam’s eyes focus away from Lux’s face out the window behind him, seeing the swarm of hellfire they’re surrounded in just outside. While the slapping took his mind off the heat for about 3 seconds, this sight before his eyes consumes all his thoughts and no amount of physical pain is gonna distract him from the obvious. How do you breathe without air? You don’t.

 

He lets go of Lux as he backs away from the window.

 

Lux rolls his eyes.

 

“I thought we were gonna make-out again,” He groans.

 

“Why is everything a JOKE to you!” Liam hisses sharply as he moves across the room, sitting on the bed and holding his head down, holding his breath.

 

Lux runs his hands through his long hair briefly, leaning back against the window as he watches Liam calmly, sticking his hands halfway in the pockets of his sweats.

 

“I know your surroundings feel overwhelming right now bean. But that’s only because of the _heat_ from outside. If you pay close attention to your surroundings without using thought, you won’t feel the heat so much as you’d feel the _space_ . When you breathe air, you feel it passing through you. When your breathe in space, _you_ pass through _it_. You’ve done it before. There’s nothing around you here. Just feel yourself passing through the space. You’ll blend into it and feel calm. Focus on the space around you. Not the heat.”

 

His voice is so soothing. Zayn’s always had a calm voice. Liam lets his mind drift with it as he listens to him and he focuses on what is around him.

 

“You’re in the eye of the storm where everything is still. Space is still. Focus on where you are. Like being outside of your body… in reverse. You’ve done it all your life.”

 

Liam’s focus zeroes in behind Lux’s head. Not at the fire outside. The walls around them, blocking the fire out. Rosey coloured walls. He feels himself blending into his favourite colour and feeling calm now.

 

Lux’s brows quirk a little as Liam has completely zoned out, staring blankly at the wall behind him. He’s still in his body but… his face looks kind of dead. It’s one thing to see it in Zayn’s memory but actually seeing Liam completely space out is a little frightening. He doesn’t look alive.

 

“Can you… _hear me?”_ Lux asks as he leans down a little, looking between Liam’s eyes.

 

 _“Anybody there?”_ He waves his hand in front of his eyes but they don’t move. When Liam doesn’t say anything, Lux feels his own panic creeping up. He brings Zayn to the front for a moment, only enough for him to hear and see.

 

 _“What’s wrong with him?”_ Lux goes to step closer as he pushes off the wall but Zayn stops him.

 

 _‘No DON’T!’_ He gasps in his head.

 

_‘Just leave him alone, there’s nothing wrong with him.’_

 

“I told him to focus and he spaced out!” Lux hisses louder.

 

 _‘He can fucking hear you.’_ Zayn says in his head.

 

 _‘Why does he look like that?’_ Lux bends in front of him, tilting his head sideways, eyes flitting over Liam’s face.

 

_‘You ever heard of resting bitch face? Just replace bitch with thanatoid.’_

 

“Ah...” Lux nods, leaning his elbows on Liam’s knees, resting his chin in his palms in front of him.

 

While Zayn explains Liam’s complete immersion into his zone with Lux examining him closely, Liam is listening to his slow heartbeat in front of him. His heart rate is very slow compared to Zayn’s.

 

Instead of air, the colour around him feels like it passes through his body as he blends into it, letting it sink into his lungs and relax inside while his listens to the thump in Lux’s chest. It feels heavier than breathing air on the surface but the tension unwinds when he really feels it thoughtlessly. Breathing warm, clean space, surrounded by rose.

 

His eyes refocus again, finding Lux right up in his face, squinting at Liam’s nose and lips as he elbows dig into his thighs. His arms overlap each other between Liam’s legs, pooling at his crotch absently. The weight of his body is all against Liam’s, all in just his arms, feels like he’s carrying the weight of the whole sky. Like if Liam wasn’t as strong as he is now, he’d be crushing him.  

 

Lux’s gaze comes back up Liam’s face again. The following pause when they make eye contact feels like it stretches out for a few miles. Lux can’t tell if he’s actually there or not cause he looks like a fucking statue. So he’s not aware of the fact that Liam is looking right at him now.

 

“You can keep going.” Liam says after a beat.

 

Lux jumps as he’s startled, getting off Liam and instinctively jerking back. Startling in the way you’d be if a statue you were closely admiring in a museum suddenly spoke to you.

 

The way Lux jerks back is the same way he did when Liam’s touch him out of the blue on the patio when he was too busy smelling the rose to notice Liam staring at him. Except, this time he was too busy staring at Liam to notice Liam staring at him… and a freaky sense of deja vu shoots through Lux. And it’s his own… not Zayn’s.

 

Liam’s daunting focus on Lux now is making him feel uneasy. The unsettling sense slinks through his body, feeling like he’s looking at himself in Liam’s eyes, looking into a reflection instead of out as Liam looks right through his eyes. And he’s suddenly reminded of exactly who he’s looking at and why he’s feeling his own deja vu now. He sees a flash of scorching hot red light zip by in his mind, making his gasp a little.

 

“Are… you alright?”

 

Liam’s voice breaks Lux out of his brief daze this time, averting his eyes to the ground as he swallows thickly, leaning back away from Liam again.

 

“Yeah, um,”  Lux clears his throat a little as he squints at the ground, shaking his head a little.

 

“ _Completely_ lost the plot there.”

 

He doesn’t even know what the hell they were talking about anymore.

 

“What was he saying again?” Lux looks back at Liam’s bemused expression.

 

“You were talking about our pits…?” Liam supplies slowly. Lux nods.

 

“Oh yeah, right.” He stands back up and paces back over to the window, internally shaking the unease out of this dumb body.

 

“Okay so there a few ways to get my pit out of you.” He continues, looking back at Liam again, who’s wondering what the fuck _that_ was. Lux looking at him like he was gawking at a ghost. Ghost of a memory.

 

“One way is through demonic transference. But if your body is too soft to do that. You'll _die_ if you purge it out of your gut. If you die in hell, that's it. You're in hell. Only with you… you’d be completely destroyed.”

 

“I’m… _soft?”_ Liam repeats. Is Lux calling him fat? Cause he’s lost a lot of weight on the account of barely needing to eat anymore ever since he got bit. He self consciously folds his arms over his belly as Lux nods, tucking a loose lock of wavy hair behind his ear shakily.

 

“Your natural body is.”

 

“So no demonic transference.” Liam sighs.

 

“Yes…. I mean no.” He squeezes his eyes closed as he trips over his words awkwardly with Liam being the one with the unsettling gaze that’s making him squirm this time.

 

“No meaning YES to NO demonic trans…” he shakes his head as he rolls his eyes.

 

“You get what the fuck I'm trying to say... And stop looking at me like that!”

 

Liam laughs as he nods, folding his hands over his legs.

 

“Okay…” He looks past Lux, at the yellow flowers in front of the window calmly, opting out of asking how he’s looking at him like he usually does when Zayn says something like that. As he looks at the daffodils, he realises they’re aren’t any butterflies in them at all. It’s part of the flower. The inside of it is fluffy and ruffled up, darker than the smoother, outer edge of the flower.

 

“They’re called butterfly narcissus.”

 

Liam looks at Lux with raised eyebrows.

 

“The… flowers, that’s what they’re… nevermind,” Lux shakes his head as he looks at them.

 

Liam almost feels like he’s making Lux nervous right now which is a completely ridiculous and laughable notion. Lux has already made it clear that he has absolutely no shame at all. But… he used to think the same thing about Zayn. But this isn’t Zayn. It’s a incubus…or... reflection _thing-..._ Liam doesn’t even know anymore. He’s Lux. And Lux isn’t afraid of anything.

 

Liam, a dopey human, making Lux nervous? He could laugh at himself right now. Why would he be nervous around him now or at all?

 

Lux squints at him a little for moment as he comes and sits on the bed too, watching Liam look ahead towards the butterfly narcissus in the window. Zayn and Liam have spent a lot of their time sitting in silence together often, so it’s never awkward when no one says anything for a while.

 

Liam goes touch the bridge of his nose absentmindedly before he hesitates when his fingers touch his nose, forgetting his not wearing glasses. He folds his fingers back over his lap neatly instead. Lux snorts a little, briefly wondering how many times a day he does that before shaking his head, looking at the ground.

 

“Yeah, anyways as I was saying,”  He finally goes on, rolling his eyes at the ground at himself, needing to get a fucking grip already.

 

“... the only other way to get rid of your pit is to get rid of _mine_. Which is here.” he gestures to the centre of his chest, tapping his finger against his heart.

 

“If mine goes, so will yours. _Without_ hurting you. It’ll just turn into nothing.”

 

Lux stares at the ground blankly.

 

 _“_ Into _…_ nothing _.”_ He repeats. Liam looks over at him, staring into space with a glaze over his eyes.

 

“Lux?”

 

Lux closes his eyes.

 

“Didn’t he say don’t fucking _interrupt?”_ He snarks sharply. Liam frowns a little, nodding as he looks away from him again.

 

Lux was being so fucking weird now. It’s creeping Liam out. Especially when he thinks about the fact that he’s talking to a fucking REFLECTION. Maybe that possible discovery is just making Liam feel weird and he’s projecting his own feeling onto him, making it seem like Lux is being weird when it’s really just Liam.

 

He might not even really be a reflection… That’s just Harry’s theory, they don’t really know what part of Narcissus he came from. But Harry’s theories are always pretty close. The notion that it’s possible to animate your own reflection and give it life at all though… maybe Liam’s thinking too hard about it. He should just stop thinking. And also… stop looking Lux in the eye. It’s clearly weird for both of them now.

 

“Sorry,” Liam squeaks. Trying hard not to disassociate. In the mirror or not, reflections very much still scared him.

 

Lux squeezes his eyes closed regretfully.

 

 _‘Can you take a fucking xanax and not snap at him? He has severe anxiety about seeing reflections you dick. Obviously he knows cause Haz fucking figured it out 3 days ago and probably told him,’_ Zayn hisses in his head as he shoves himself into the front again. But Lux is way stronger than him now that they’re close to the full moon.

 

At this point, Zayn can’t have control unless Lux let’s him. Unless there’s something reflective nearby. Which is why Lux is feeling shit more intensely that he was when he first got in here. He’s starting to feel everything in this body more fully and… it’s weird. He’s never had a body before.

 

 _‘The fuck is a xanax?’_ Lux squints at the ground.

 

_‘It’s a drug that will make you less of an irate asshole.’_

 

_‘Sorry I’m not a fucking drug addict like you. After what that ACID did to me-’_

 

Zayn tricked Lux into taking acid so he wouldn’t notice him going back to Cocytus to find Louis. Didn’t run into Ira so it was all fine. It was the most interesting trip ever that’s for sure.

 

_‘Just stop being an asshole, please. I get that it’s weird for you feeling hormones but this is a TEENAGED BODY and you’re gonna feel that whenever he gets close to you. Just relax.’_

 

 _‘Did you not just see what I fucking saw?’_ Lux hisses.

 

_‘So?’_

 

_‘So that wasn’t from your memory…’_

 

_‘I’m missing your point here…’_

 

_‘That’s never fucking happened to me before!’_

 

_‘Well that’s your name isn’t it? Cogito ergo sum, Luxuria. Now you know for sure, congrats.’_

 

_‘What happened to “I’m nothing?”’_

 

_‘Still true.’_

 

Lux rolls his eyes.

 

 _‘Such an asshole…’_ He mutters as Zayn laughs.

 

He rakes through his annoying hair, slumping over on his knees. This is way more than just sex hormones. More than deja vu. This body was a fucking nightmare. It was exciting at first but… corporeal bodies are seriously overrated.

 

_‘You’re damn right it’s overrated. At least you didn’t have to go through puberty. Why would you ever want to exist? You need to change your fucking name.’_

 

Lux snorts a little, shaking his head before he looks over at Liam again.

 

Liam looks like he’s on the verge of tears as he twiddles his thumbs silently, trying to concentrate on staying in his body even though Lux knows he wants to go away right now. Everything humans want and desire, anything at all someone lusts for, a cigarette, sex, a bagel, comfort, revenge, a lover, nothing at all, it all radiates off them and permeates in the air around Lux. Maybe Zayn should do this alone. He’s just gonna scare Liam everytime he looks at him now. He reaches for the hand mirror the fell on the floor and stays inside it instead.

 

 

Zayn blinks down into the mirror.

 

“What are you doing?” Liam glances at him. Zayn folds it in his lap and looks at Liam.

 

“I can’t get rid of Lux until the full moon. That’s when my body will be at it’s weakest point so there's only one chance.”

 

This Lux/Zayn flip flopping is going to drive Liam to actual insanity. But side note, Harry was right about destroying their pits, as always.

 

“I still don’t understand why he said you’re staying here...”

 

 

“There’s stuff I had to do down here. I wasn’t even supposed to be on the surface anyways-”

 

“Okay, don’t do that to me,” Liam stops him right there as he stands up, stopping him from even saying what he said the other night. Zayn watches him hold his head like he’s got a migraine.

 

He doesn't want to hear about his stupid past life or his soul being damned and him belonging in hell because of some inaccurate prophecy that doesn’t even really mean anything. Cause that's not true.

  
  
“Don’t do what?”

 

“Don’t talk to me like you’re in a past tense or like you belong here because you DON’T! You belong where people are ALIVE and breathing AIR!”

 

“Liam I’m not alive anymore, I was sacrificed-”

 

“STOP SAYING THAT!” Liam yells at him now as he’s starting to get angry, feeling himself slipping out of his body again as his emotions churn too thick in him, getting ready to cut off so the stress goes away.

 

“You’re not fucking dead! I’m sick of you talking like your life is over and you’re not HERE anymore. You don’t have to stay here! You're heart's still beating-”

 

“Babe, that’s not my heart beating.” Zayn sighs as he stands up to hold Liam's hand against his chest. Liam can feel the thump steadily. The mirror slips out of his lap to the fuzzy white rug below him.

 

“Remember when Obi-Wan Kenobi said “ _Your eyes can deceive you_ ”?”

 

Liam nods a little. Zayn quoting Star Wars right now doesn’t ease his growing anxiety.

 

He tries to look down at the mirror below him but Zayn’s other hand keeps his chin up.

 

“Close your eyes.”

 

Liam takes a deep breath and does as he says, finding nothing but darkness behind his eyelids as he listens to Zayn's heart.

 

The darkness seems to pulse as he feels it, going along with the thumping until he realises he's seeing what's around Zayn's heart, not behind his eyelids. Or… feeling it. Maybe it’s both.

 

His heart is surrounded by some kind of darkness and it has it's own pulse, keeping up Zayn's. The same darkness that’s in Liam’s stomach.

 

“When High Tide sacrificed me up there, Eggsy had the special honour in stabbing my heart. _Multiple times_. All this rushed into my body and surrounded it to keep it beating. Lux came with it, straight out of the hellfire out there.”

 

That sound Liam is hearing isn’t his heart at all. It’s the pit pulsing in his body. The familiar echoing is so off-putting now that Liam concentrates on it. As if… there’s nothing inside Zayn but that darkness. Like a small fire he’d hear flickering in an empty cave. Liam gasps as he pulls his hand away.

 

“In your eyes, I look alive from the outside but nothing in there is _actually_ alive… but Lux. I’m empty. I’ve always been empty. Not just angsty-depressed-teenager-empty like. My outside appearance is like a shell. He’s the only thing keeping me alive right now.”

 

Liam thinks back to when Lux told him Zayn’s body would've been rotting in the ground without him. Now Liam feels like something in him is dying too as he realises what Zayn is actually saying.

 

“The only way for me to get rid of him is through demonic transference. That’s what Nars did.”

 

The cringe that rocks through Liam’s bones when he hears that name makes him want to scream into a fucking abyss.

 

He closes his eyes, breathing shakily as he holds his chest, trying to contain the sick and panic threatening to put him in a chokehold, forgetting how to breathe all over again. His words resonate crystal clear. Zayn watches him with pinched lips.

 

  
"So what you're saying is without Lux you’re…” He says slowly, the sting in his eyes feeling like someone just threw a vase of acid in them.

 

He comes behind Liam quickly before he can lose it, holding his waist gently.

  
"I’m never really gonna die Li. This has kind of made me immortal to a certain degree. It’s a kind curse that carries into another life. I’ll be up there again… and I’ll still look the same, it’ll just be a while-”

 

“ _A THOUSAND years?_ ” Liam’s voice wavers. Zayn shakes his head quickly.

 

“It won’t be that long! I mean… I don’t really know how long it’ll be but it won’t be 1,000 years I promise. Babe, I HAVE to do this. If I don't, _you'll never be human again_ and loads of innocent people will DIE _._ High Tide aren't done in Manningtree.”

 

“How are you gonna do shit about High Tide if you stay down here FOREVER!?”

 

“Lima don't _worry_ about that. Just go home. Everything will be fine up there you don't have to worry about anything at all.” he says gently but it doesn't reassure Liam of anything. Cause nothing was ever gonna be fine ever again. Not only was his life totally fucked up there, Zayn was going to be in HELL down here.

 

Liam has an entire horrific picture now. If Zayn keeps Lux, his pit will be stuck in him forever and so will Liam's and High Tide will be making more sacrifices in less than 2 weeks. But if he gets Lux out, Zayn will die and be trapped in hell for an indefinite amount of time, most likely FOREVER… but Liam will be moving to Wolverhampton in a few weeks.

 

All in all, the biggest tragedy here is clear: Zayn’s staying in hell no matter what happens and the likliness of him ever getting out is never in this lifetime.

 

“Why don't you just go on and say what you ACTUALLY mean!” Liam turns on him with clouds blocking his sight.

 

“You are _SACRIFICING YOUR OWN LIFE!_ ”

 

“Lima, _everything that is happening right now has already happened to me before_ . I can't change that! We can’t control anything that's happening. Even without you thrown into the mix, I’d still have to do this. I told you, vanity is my curse and it will always drive me here. It's this thing I've been carrying around on my skin my entire life. On my fucking face, echoing around in my body. That nostalgic thing about me you’ve always felt is _vanity_ cause it’s a scar on my SOUL and nothing anyone can do will ever make it go away. It's gonna keep following me around for as long as I EXIST. Even without Lux or any of my demons, it's still haunted me cause nothing will ever change who I am. I have to stay here… you’ll understand after this is over."

 

“God _why_ -” Liam’s chokes up as his arms flop uselessly at his sides before he turns around, raking his hands over his head, looking at the ceiling.

 

“ _Why is this HAPPENING,”_

 

“Baby, look at me,” Zayn makes him turn around, leaning his head against Liam’s. As soon as he does, Liam holds his hands.

 

“I have to go back.” he blurts, his resolve flying through the 5 stages of grief out of order on a race track as he's already on bargaining.

 

“Go… back?” Zayn squints in confusion.

 

“To the fire. I have to go back to the night of the fire.” Liam starts away towards the door.

 

“None of this would’ve happened if they took me instead of you like they were supposed to. I have to go back-”

 

He stops Liam from leaving the room, blocking the door with his arms spread out across it.

 

“No, you can’t do that. You have to go home.”

 

Liam squints at him now.

 

“How could I go home? I can’t go home-”

 

“The same way you came, through the ceiling. There’s stuff going on that I can’t even explain to you. Fucked up stuff that will ruin your life cause it’s already ruined so many other people’s lives that I have to end here now.”

 

Liam shakes his head, going anyways as he moves him out of the way.

 

“Not at the expense of your own. And not when there’s a billion time streams out there somewhere where I can go back through and especially not when it was never supposed to happen to you in the first place. They were looking for _me_. I don't care what happened to Narcissus the famous asshole. That's NOT who you are.”

 

Liam’s muscles freeze then, snapping his mouth shut and holding him in place uncomfortably until he’s turned back around slowly and shoved up against the wall by the force of Zayn's mind.

 

He looks at Zayn in alarm as he’s shaking his head, rubbing over his neck while he walks over, squinting at the ground.

 

“You're gonna watch the fuck you say to me right now. I'm not letting you go and get _killed_. High Tide were not meant to sacrifice you and if you ever say something like that again like your life isn't WORTH anything, I will punch you in the fucking face.” He says as he looks up at Liam.

 

“Like I FUCKING said, you’re _going home_ . Whether I have to chain you to a missile and launch you back by force and make Harry see that you're at home everyday, _you're going home._ ” He reiterates, enunciating slowly.

 

Zayn’s eyes without Lux there are so off putting now that he's looking Liam in the eye. No life behind them at all anymore. It’s so far away from the guy who was full of happiness and nervousness, blushing and laughing on that hill 3 days ago. Like… he died and here’s what’s left of him now. These are the eyes of someone who has fully accepted death.

 

“Zayn you don’t understand, I literally can't go back home-” Liam's mouth snaps shut against his will again as Zayn closes his hand at his side.

 

“This is not a _debate_. You’re not going off on a motherfucking SPACE EXPEDITION, floating in the middle of nowhere and playing God because those things don't like arrogance.”

 

“How is going back in time arrogant?” Liam clearly needs to get a dictionary and actually read the definition of arrogance.

 

“Thinking you have the ability to change some much BIGGER than you is arrogant. Any form of arrogance or hubris or dangerous over-confidence that you can do something you CAN’T, will get you into a fucking lot of trouble you don’t want, breaking forbidden laws you don’t know exist. TRUST ME, I know what I’m talking about. You can’t go back in time and change whatever the fuck you want. _Sine poena nulla lex.”_ He says that last part in another language that Liam doesn’t understand as he shakes his head in utter confusion.

 

“What?”

 

“I’m saying you will be punished! Fucking up the cosmos is _haram._ Messing with time, going into outer space worlds where you don’t belong. That is _sihr_ which is an act of _kufr_ and one of the sins which leads to ultimate doom. Neither of us will benefit from that. It’s already landed us here as it is. People who defy the law and try to look at or touch the unseen or change it are _kafirs_ in the eyes of Allah, or the universe or whatever you want to call it. You are not a lawbreaker!”

 

Zayn’s talking with his hands now and saying words in languages Liam doesn’t know, which means he’s getting worked up and this is about to become a huge screaming feast.

 

“Z… speak _English.”_

 

“Sacrificing your blood and opening portals and running around in space and altering reality or time is against the fucking law!” He says in full English now.

 

“Laws in the space time continuum. Laws or reality. The. Law. If you fuck with that, that shit that will lead you to the underworld like what Saf did to you and that's my fucking fault for not locking my door and doing that in front of her!” Zayn yells in a language Liam understands.

 

“What happened to me is something you can’t fix. This is a punishment for breaking the law. _Hoc est a poena.”_

 

Liam had no idea Zayn could speak Latin. He thought that language died off with ancient Rome.

 

“Why are you being punished for something you didn’t do?”

 

“Cause Narcissus the famous fucking asshole broke every goddamn law he could get his fucking hands on. He was so fucking ARROGANT he actually thought he could get on a plane of existence where only GODS are allowed. After he got cursed and put in his fucking place, he lost his will to live and tried to drown himself in that fucking marsh and ended up here in HELL where he made a deal the devil. Making deals on your SOUL is permanent, which is why I’m never gonna die and why I’m cursed to live in vain forever. If you even attempt to change that, even a LITTLE, you will break the law of time and move something that was here way before either of us off it’s balance. This isn’t something that’s yours to fucking change,”

 

He gestures to his chest.

 

“ _Kufr_ is rejecting God. Or the universe. Doing something you’re not supposed to do, going against the rules that are set in place. If you alter time or try to go to a world where you don’t belong, like the center of the universe _you will be punish_. You’re not a God. You don’t belong out there in space and you can’t change the past. Do you understand what I’m saying right now?”

 

Liam nods slowly.

 

“I’m being sort of vague about this shit because I don’t want to scare you more than you already are. All you need to know right now is that this has nothing to do with you and I’m not letting you invite yourself into the freak show. No portals. No time travel. No fucking up the space time continuum. No _kufr._ Or demons or witches or stars in the sky or anything you didn't know about 2 months ago. You’re not about mess with shit you don’t understand!”

 

Liam doesn't say anything so Zayn doesn't blow an actual gasket. He's never seen him so stressed in his life. As if Liam needed it to be confirmed that Zayn definitely hasn’t been sleeping at all.

 

He keeps telling Liam off, holding him still against the wall as he does so he'll hear every word.

 

“If you try to control something you CAN’T, or even worse, SHOULDN’T, it is guaranteed to backfire on you. Whether you wanna call it karma or God… Allah, the universe _whatever_ the fuck, you can’t just float around in the universe doing whatever the hell you want, breaking laws by changing history. That’s not how reality works. The expiration date of my life passed before I was even born. Something out there way more powerful than either of us decided this was my fate and we have to accept that. Accept _reality_ instead of rejecting it like how you’re trying to do. Everything that happened, happened for a reason. If you go back and undo anything, it’s gonna work its way back to happen again the exact same FUCKING way and you will make everything WORSE. Am I making myself FUCKING clear Liam? When I let go, you go HOME. Not OUTER SPACE.”

 

When he tries to move at all, his muscles contract painfully.

 

“Zayn,” He gasps, almost feeling paralyzed.

 

“Why are you… _doing_ this to me-”

 

“You think I want to be doing this to you right now? Hemming you up and screaming at you? Fucking up your life more than I already have? I DON'T. But I’m scared of the image of you going into that fucking portal and doing things 17 year old boys have no business doing. I need to get you to understand that you’re putting your life in danger just by even being involved with me right now.”

 

“Okay so you can’t leave here. Fine. Why can’t I stay with you?” Liam throws out the resolve to go back in time since that’s apparently against the law.

 

“What happens when someone stands in an open field and curses at God?”

 

Liam’s eyes dart as Zayn actually asks him.

 

“Umm… they get struck by lightning?”

 

“And what happens if someone stands next to that person?”

 

Liam rolls his eyes as he sees what he’s getting at. He’s saying he’s cursed and getting struck by lightning right now and if Liam stays near him, he’ll get struck too.

 

“Zayn that’s not even remotely the same thing.”

 

“Lightning or not, as much as I wish you could, you can’t stay here and we can’t be together right now!”

 

“But… Louis can, right? He can get as close and stay for as long as he wants, right?”

 

Zayn’s head pulls back a little as his jaw pulses, narrowing his eyes at Liam’s insinuation. His fists ball up at his sides as he walks up to Liam pinned up against the wall.

 

“You really wanna speak in riddles right now mate?” He says low as his eyes darken.

 

“I don’t think there’s such thing as proverbial riddles.” Liam retorts, saying what he’s getting at isn’t a riddle. Cause it’s obvious.

 

“Louis is fucking DEAD. I don’t want that to be you!”

 

Zayn rubs over his face in frustration, wiping off his wet cheeks and pulling back his hair, using the tie around his wrist to throw it into a sloppy bun at his neck.

 

“I would never betray you like that ever again. I don’t WANT you to ever leave me you fucking prick. I wish you’d understand how… _hard_ it is for me to tell you to leave. I wouldn't let you walk away from me unless where I am is a threat to your life. If something happened to you like me…” Zayn squeezes his eyes closed, holding his temples.

 

“I can’t even fucking _think_ about it.” His voice cracks a little.

 

Liam knows he’s an ass for even saying what he just did. He still can’t move a muscle to reach out to him though. He looks Liam in the eye again and it feels like he’s looking right through Liam, at the wall behind his head.

 

“I’m going to be here for a while. I’m not CHEATING ON YOU with Louis or anyone else if that’s really your biggest concern.”

 

“No,” Liam closes his eyes hard.

 

“Zayn it’s not-”

 

 **“SHUT. UP!”** Zayn is completely done with this being a two person conversation.

 

“Just shut the fuck up. You never wanna listen but you’re damn certain gonna hear my fucking **VOICE.** I’m done wasting all our time here fighting with you. I want you to stay alive more than I want us to be together because I love you with everything I am and I care about your life so sorry if that makes me an asshole but my life is pretty much over and and I’m not ending yours too. We can’t have a life here together cause it will be HELL. We’ll end up fighting like this 24 fucking 7 and you’ll end up dead cause this isn’t some love shack or a fucking romantic paradise. This is where you come to be punished and SUFFER.”

 

 _“I’d rather SUFFER than go back there!”_ Liam chokes out, sucking up his tears.

 

“I’ll DIE if I see him again, I can’t go to Wolverhampton, I _can’t see him again!”_ The words slip out of his subconsciousness. Zayn doesn’t know about that though so it just sounds like nonsense.

 

 _“Liam, you’ll be fine._ I promise you I’ll be back, there’s just shit I have to do right now. _”_

 

“ _Like what?”_ He keeps saying he has to do “something” and he won’t even tell Liam what it is.

 

 _“Please… don’t make me kick you out,”_ Zayn holds his head as he squeezes his eyes closed.

 

_“Just… just go home please I can’t let you stay here-”_

 

 _“I CAN’T GO HOME!”_ Liam unintentionally pushes out of his body with moon shattering strength.

 

The momentum of it shoots out of him sporadically, kicking up the curtains and knocking over the flower vase on the desk as it goes right into Zayn and breaking Liam’s body out of the grip Zayn has on every muscle in his body in the process.  

 

Zayn winces as soon as it touches him, seizing up like he's been struck by lightning all over again, stepping on the mirror on the ground as he steps back on it with his bare foot, breaking it in half and getting glass shards stuck into his skin.

 

He yells in pain as his chest caves in after the mirror breaks and he falls back.

 

Liam’s back in his body and catching him before he does fall, shocked by himself as he has no idea what that even was, but Zayn’s hands come up to shove Liam away from him.

 

“I’m _so_ sorry I didn’t mean to-”

 

“Get OFF me!”

 

His eyes harden into cold dark rocks as his pupil expands over his entire eye. It breaks Liam inside cause he’s never hit Zayn in his life with actual painful intent and he somehow just did without even touching him. He may as well have. Zayn kicks the glass out of his foot roughly as his feet come up behind him so he floats, dripping blood on the white rug. He whips Liam around by his shoulders, making Liam stumble as he’s now facing the door that flings open on it’s own, crashing into the wall.

 

“Get out, just GET OUT AND FUCKING GO HOME!” He pushes Liam out of the room and slams the door closed behind him, locking Liam out.

 

*

 

While Liam and Zayn talk in the bedroom, outside in the living room Harry is sitting on the couch with Louis, going between watching Louis play Grand Theft Auto and anxiously watching Zayn and Liam embracing and kissing in bed from where they've left the door open.

 

He's too on edge about where he is and what's happening to be happy for their little reunion right now.

 

Plus the air here is really fucking thin. He feels like he should've brought a damn oxygen tank. Luckily, the house is in a pocket of empty space so he's not _actually_ breathing hellfire. If he was, he would be dead right now. Like Louis.

 

But that doesn’t explain why he isn’t dead right now… cause Louis told him there’s no air here. He doesn’t get how he can breathe empty space but, whatever. Harry’s glad the universe has been looking out for him. He’s almost died a dozen times on a dozen different planes of existence in the last 3 days alone yet here he is, still kicking it completely unscathed. Finding out he can breathe in space was making him question if he really was an alien. Maybe there's something the Styles forgot to tell him.

 

When the car crashed through the house, he managed to not pass out or get hurt at all despite the crash destroying the front of the car completely but Liam actually did pass out for about half an hour cause his dumbass stood up in his seat as the car was crashing and… it was maybe a good thing he did.

 

They were right in the middle of having sex when they made their extremely dramatic grand entrance and it was so fucking awkward to literally crash into. Harry is just assuming it was Lux and Louis but… he can’t tell them apart. He just knows if it _was_ Zayn, he’s gonna kick his ass.

 

They just stopped and he picked Liam up by the shoulders, sling them over his own shoulders as he held under his legs and carried him to the bedroom without a word.

 

He gets that the timing for Zayn and Liam to finally decide to be together couldn’t have been any worse. He gets that this situation has fucked their lives up the ass so hard they all definitely have permanent internal injuries now. But if Zayn has been cheating on Liam down here… Harry doesn’t know what he’s gonna do but he’s gonna do something goddammit. As far as he is concerned, Zayn's guilty until proven innocent for now and Harry is Liam's lawyer.

 

He can’t ask Louis because Louis will say anything to get Liam out of here. Cause he’s always hated him and plotted to keep Liam away to have Zayn to himself his entire life.

 

“You should go home.” Louis says as he plays the game.

 

Harry looks at Louis.

 

“Why?”

 

“Trust me, this isn’t a house you want to be stuck in. Especially if Lux’s brother sees you. He sucks souls out of human bodies and wears them like clothes. Unless you wanna be someone’s new outfit, you should be trying to get out as soon as possible.”

 

Harry rolls his eyes at Louis. He was so full of shit, he can’t even take him seriously. He looks at Liam and Zayn in the room again and it appears they might be arguing now as they stand in front of each other.

 

_“Zayn what the hell is going on?!”_

 

Harry can hear Liam’s voice a little better as he yells.

 

“Z’s dumping you for me, love. We were kind of in the middle of something when you crashed in… literally.” Louis yells at the door. Harry hits Louis in the shoulder, making him laugh.

 

“We’re rotting in hell together for the next eternity. Soz, you’re not invited.”

 

Zayn tells Louis to shut up as he slams the door closed.

 

“Liam’s probably mad he’s not invited.” Louis repeats as he goes back to the game with a simple shrug.

 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Harry squints at Louis as he shakes his head.

 

“You think what’s happened to us is funny?”

 

“I think it’s hilarious to be quite honest, mate. My bloody sides are splitting. Don’t you see me dying? Hashtag dead a.f.” He says sarcastically, blank faced.

 

Harry gets that he’s bitter about being dead but he’s still just an annoying dick who probably would’ve gone to hell regardless.

 

“You know, I don't really expect you to care about Liam or even Zayn since you’ve been down here fucking him 50 times a day like you've always wanted but doesn't it feel a little sick to be taking advantage of Zayn’s vulnerability?”

 

Louis laughs, shaking his head.

 

“If you haven't noticed, I'm fucking DEAD so I think I can do whatever the fuck I want… which right now is limited to _burning in hell_ _outside_ or fucking Zayn in here. Which one would _you_ choose?”

 

Yeah… controversial question.

 

“Exactly.” Louis laughs at Harry’s silence.

 

“And who the hell are you to judge me? You get to go back to the surface and live out the rest of your life like a normal teenager. Me and Zayn? We're FUCKED. At 17. Forever. So if fucking our brains out takes our minds off the fact that we're _rotting in hell together_ then that's probably what we're gonna do.”

 

Harry supposes he really can't argue with that.

 

“And I ESPECIALLY don't give a fuck about Liam. The most ungrateful asshole in this entire situation.” He adds, instantly losing Harry there.

 

He gets why Louis hates Liam. He’s been in love with Zayn pretty much his entire life too. But even when he had him, Zayn still only really saw Liam. Harry is sure the Zayn-syndrome is the cause of everyone’s aversion to Liam. Cause everyone wants Zayn and he only really wanted one person. It all adds up in basic math in Harry’s mind.

 

Louis keeps ranting about his hatred for Liam and Harry just let’s him rant cause he’s dead and Harry feels bad for the guy, honestly. His life was destined to suck ass the moment he got involved with Zayn. Actually… all of their lives were.

 

“All he ever fucking moans about is _Liam._ Literally. Luxie moans his name every fucking time and I'm sure he's doing that on purpose now just to fuck with me.”

 

Harry has an internal sigh of relief that it really is Lux… or _Luxie..._ he's sleeping with. Of course it's Lux. Louis was fucking him and he knows Zayn has rebuked the notion of ever being the one getting fucked - an attribute of his sex-life he shared with Harry in confidence on several occasions. Why he’d ever even doubt that it was Zayn, he doesn't even know. Maybe because he knows it wouldn't be the first time Zayn's betrayed Liam in similar ways. When he used to blow guys that had Liam’s face shoved into toilets the day before. But whatever, he doesn’t know the terms of their relationship right now cause Zayn was always… generously open to put it lightly. But he knows that Liam isn’t so… yeah they seem to be working their shit out just fine at the moment as they can’t keep their hands off each other.

 

Harry continues to listen to Louis cause he’s a good listener and people tend to dump their shit on him anyways.

 

“I have to listen to him crying over him for the rest of _forever._ He's such an idiot, throwing away his life for NOTHING. He could actually go back to the surface but no. Everything is about Liam.” Louis scoffs, shaking his head. Harry blinks once in confusion.

 

“He can?”

 

Louis nods.

 

“Yeah. I mean he'd have to eat people once a month and the portal would be open forever but at least he'd be sort of free. I wouldn't go to hell for anyone, I don’t care how obsessed with them I am.” Louis rolls his eyes.

 

“What do you mean the portal would still be open?”

 

“I mean he’s trying to close that portal up there forever.” Louis nods to the ceiling where the marsh is.

 

“But he can’t close it until the full moon when all his demons are back in hell where they belong for Halloween. But they’re always all over the fucking place so it’s impossible to know if they’ll actually show up. Especially Morosa. He can’t save Liam until after he closes the portal cause he needs Luxie’s help to get around in hell since he’d never get all this done in time alone. So he has to all this shit in 12 days. Even if time moves slow down here, it’s still such a waste of time. I keep telling him it’s never gonna work but he won’t listen to me so, whatever.”

 

Everything Louis just said makes absolutely no sense to Harry.

 

“What do you mean until his demons are in hell? Why is he even closing the portal?”

 

Louis shrugs.

 

“Some of them live on the surface. I dunno why he’s closing it but he has to wait until they’re all in hell or they’ll be locked out. Something to do with witches and his past or some shit. All I know is after he closes it, he’s planning on _killing himself_ cause the only way to get that shit out of Liam's body without Liam getting hurt is if Zayn kills Lux. And the only way to kill Lux is for him to kill himself. He and Lux have this retarded prerogative about Liam and both of them are willing to die for him. If anyone is fucking selfish, it's _LIAM._ Zayn came here for him and he’s willing to DIE for him. That ungrateful cunt should be the one _dying._ Not Zayn.”

 

Harry looks to the bedroom door, hearing Liam and Zayn’s muffled voices yelling at each other.

 

Zayn’s going to… _kill himself?_ But if he dies and closes the portal… he’ll never be able to come back to the surface again. He’ll be stuck here forever.

 

“Don’t worry. He’ll never _actually_ die. He's immortal. He can find another way to the surface. There’s portals everywhere in hell. They’re just dangerous to find. He’s been looking for one for the last 3 months. The guy doesn’t even fucking SLEEP. He’s gonna kill himself before he can get anywhere. He'll just have a different name when all this is over. Same face though.”

 

He points to the portrait of Narcissus on the wall above them.

 

“Like this bloke. This all happened to him already. That's Zayn. Or a similar version of him anyways… before he died like 18 years ago. This was his house.”

 

“What happened to him?” Harry asks, trying to think of why Zayn would risk being stuck here forever. He’d probably never see Liam again if he closes the portal in the marsh.

 

He knows the Enchiridion isn’t totally accurate about everything that happened with Narcissus. It’s like reading about George Washington in a history book. You’re never gonna learn everything about him unless you actually talk to him. But you’ll get a basic understanding in a book. Which is why Harry loved reading so much. It’s like meeting people and ideas from a past you’ll never know. But the downside to reading really old books was that they can easily be misinterpreted. Narcissus existed a thousand years ago. The story of his life might have been completely flipped. The most amazing thing about all of this for Harry was... he can actually meet the person in the book.

 

In fact, he already knows him. Which was kind of really fucking cool. His involvement with him in this life could end up in a history book one day and someone just like him a thousand years from now in the future could be reading about them right now in the present. But the future doesn’t exist so- okay Harry needs to stay focused.

 

That entire thought is why people think Harry is always high. His brain cooks up crazy shit that makes him think he’s high himself, even when he’s not.

 

He doubts Zayn would remember anything concrete about his past life. But then again… Harry asked him about it and he said he did. Sort of. But that might’ve been Lux. He makes a note to ask Zayn again in the back of his mind as he listens to Louis after blocking out his voice for a second there.

 

“I don’t really know what happened to Narcissus but… I know it wasn't good. They said he had a lot of regrets. He didn't even tell anyone he was leaving when he did. Just left without a word. Spent a thousand years with his “friends” and left without even saying goodbye. Sounds like typical asshole Zayn to me.” Louis shrugs.

 

“You have to ask Ace. He actually knew him. They were like best friends.”

 

“Who’s Ace?”

 

“Lux’s oldest brother, Acedia. He knows everything. His room is down the hall. It looks like a library in there but he sleeps a lot so, you’ll have to wait until he wakes up in a few days. He’s like really fucking old. He’s cranky when you get him up.”

 

Harry knows acedia means sloth in Latin. Zayn’s laziness. Of course that was his best friend. Harry almost laughs at the mental image. The shouting from the room gets loud again until something thrusts against the door.

 

Louis and Harry both look towards it for a moment as it goes quiet.

 

_“Get OFF me!”_

 

The door swings open again suddenly and Zayn pushes Liam out.

 

“Get out just GET OUT AND FUCKING GO HOME!” Zayn yells at him before the door slams shut again by itself. Liam leans his head against it.

 

“I’m _sorry-”_ His voice breaks as he hiccups

 

“ _Please don’t make me go back there,”_

 

“Hey,” Harry comes over to him in alarm as he’s crying.

 

“What happened?”

 

“ _I’ve never hit him that hard before,”_

 

 _“YOU HIT HIM?!?”_ Harry shouts.

 

“I don’t know WHAT I did to him but I hurt him! We were fighting and something just… pushed out of me,”

 

“Lima Bean just got _dumped._ That’s what happened. _”_ Louis laughs from the couch. Liam turns around, glaring at him as he angrily wipes his face.

 

“Didn’t take you for the abusive type.”

 

“I'm not an ABUSER!”

 

“What the hell happened to you apologizing to him for being a dick and making amends?” Harry asks Louis in confusion as he’d supposedly buried the hatchet ages ago.

 

Louis shrugs, going back to his game.

 

“That was because I thought he saved my life. Turns out, I’m in hell _because_ of Liam so fuck him and fuck YOU for driving Anthony’s fucking car into the ground and bringing him here. Cause I know the simpleton’s not smart enough to have found this house on his own.” Louis shrugs as he continues to casually play the video game.

 

“Haven’t you ruined our lives enough? Just fucking go home like Lux told you to.”

 

Liam shakes his head, ignoring Louis’ insult to his intelligence.

 

“You going to hell wasn't MY fault. Maybe if you were a better person you would've moved on the right way.”

 

Louis scoffs, laughing briefly.

 

“I didn't just “go to hell”. A demon that your ass brought to the surface _ATE_ me. I'm in hell because you got Zayn sacrificed when it should’ve been _you_ so some shitty _“best friend”_ or whatever the fuck you are you turned out to be. He's not only dying _for_ you… he’s dying _because_ of you. The least you could do is make it easier for him and stop being so clingy. And ABUSIVE apparently. He doesn't like either of those just so you know for future reference not to follow him around all day long or HIT him when the next Zayn makes his glamorous appearance on the surface again in the next millennium. But you might be dead by then so,” Louis shrugs.

 

Liam walks over to him, his already tweaked nerves contracting in his body as he tries to keep this pit from spreading too far or sending that bolt of energy flying out of him all over the place again. He can feel it all over his skin but it feels way more alive down here. And stronger. Like he can turn into a super Saiyan and take Louis apart within a single blink of the eye.

 

Harry watches their energy feeding off each other like venomous snakes. He's starting to think this hell in the air is making everyone’s emotion flare off balance and over-act. Especially Liam’s. He's crying and then he's angry in a snap. Deep down, he’s a very emotional person but his “personality disorder” has always made his not feel anything. It seems like he’s feeling it all right now.

 

Harry's never felt so much hostility in one place and it’s making him queasy on top of the thin, hot air. Or non-air rather. But it was only a matter of time before Louis and Liam came down to this. Fighting over Zayn like always. Except this setting is light-years away from what Harry ever could've imagined.

 

Liam as half-demon and Louis an apparition in the house of Zayn's past life in the middle of an void in hell. That was their fucking life. As Harry reflects, he doesn't know if he's just amazed or over it entirely.

 

Liam and Louis continue to come for each other's throats while Harry watches without the popcorn he’s suddenly craving.

 

“You wanna talk shit about _friends?_ ” Liam says slowly before he demolishes the TV with his fists, kicking it to the ground and making it explode at Louis’ feet so Louis has nothing to look at but him.

 

Louis’ mouth pops open.

 

“You’re seriously gonna regret doing that…” He murmurs as he looks at Liam.

 

“Not even fucking with you right now mate. Avaritia is going to SLAUGHTER you.” He shakes his head.

 

“Who’s Avaritia?” Harry asks curiously, leaning his foot up against the wall next to Zayn’s room and crossing his arms. These walls seem pretty thin. He can hear Zayn moving around in there and talking to himself in fluent Latin. Which means Zayn can most definitely hear them too.

 

He supposes Avaritia means “avarice”, like greediness.

 

“Lux’s brother _._ He’s kind of label whore. The one I told you collects human bodies and wears them like new designer outfits so you better hope he doesn't get back before you leave or your bodies gonna be sucked dry and hanging in his massive closet with the rest of the other hundreds of other bodies he’s stolen from the surface.”

 

“How do so many of his demons live in this one house? Aren’t we in Lust?” Harry asks, ignoring that complete bullshit he keeps saying about someone stealing their bodies. Cause Lux assured Liam that was impossible.

 

Louis shrugs.

 

“This house is in some kind of loophole. It’s technically not in hell. I told you Nars’ and Ace built it together in a pocket of empty space that thing up there created,” Louis points to ceiling in the general direction of where the marsh is. They can’t see it from this side.

 

“It’s like a big hole in space more than it is a portal. Why anything can come through it. But if you step outside of the pocket of space, you’ll burn to death… unless you’ve got a guide that knows how to control hellfire. Like Luxie.”

 

A loud crash comes from the bedroom, like shatter glass. They all look at the door.

 

 _“You can’t FORCE him, just let me fucking do it!”_ Zayn's voice sounds through the door as another crash thumps against the wall.

 

Louis looks back at Harry and Liam again.

 

“What happens if you step outside?” Harry continues the conversation casually, ignoring Zayn arguing with what is most likely Lux in the next room, slipping in and out of English.

 

“Nothing happens. I'm already dead. But it’s hot a fuck out there so I just chill in here and play computer games. Except you just DESTROYED Ava’s TV so I guess I’ve got nothing to do now!” Louis yells at Liam, throwing the Xbox controller on the ground.

 

Liam doesn’t even care whose TV he just destroyed. He wants to do that to Louis’ head. There's only one other person Liam’s ever hated more than Louis Tomlinson but that guy doesn't exist to him so Louis gets all his energy now.

 

“You know, you were NEVER a good friend to him.” Liam crosses his arms as he shakes his head.

 

“All you ever did was get Z into trouble and convince him to do drugs, break the law and try to get into his pants until you managed to get an entire bottle down his throat and got him really DRUNK so he’d finally fuck you. You practically RAPED him. And you're taking advantage of what's happening to him now like everyone around him ALWAYS has. That's all he's ever been to you. A body. At least I genuinely love him for him as a person. How shitty of a person, can you be to use him like that? Not even death can stop you.”

 

Louis rolls his eyes, bored of Liam as he reaches down to the arm of the couch for a cigarette now that he can’t play video games. This once pretty living room is in shambles right now with the demolished TV and wrecked car in the middle of the floor. No wonder Lux is kicking them out of his house. It’ll be on the ground by the time Liam and Louis get done.

 

“You have been _sorely_ mistaken, Liam. You don't know shit about what you're even talking about with me and him right now. For your information, those rumours weren’t about ME. I wasn’t the one going around trying to RAPE him. If you wanna fight someone over that, I’d reckon you go talk to Tyler Quinn but I wouldn’t bother cause Lux already did. He’s down in Cocytus if you still wanna go for a visit.” Louis sighs.

 

“Is Tom here?” Harry disrupts the conversation curiously.

 

“Down the hall. He cries a lot so, you won’t get much conversation.” Louis tells Harry briefly before he taps out the ashes of his cigarette and turns his cold gaze back to Liam in front of him.

 

“I’m not even gonna lie to you, love. There’s a starving sex demon living inside him right now so no, I'm not actually fucking Zayn just to give you some peace of mind. He hasn’t wanted to touch me since I had a girlfriend. I’m fucking Lux. Whatever, he's good in bed. I'm sure you know that. Lux doesn't even like me. But he lured me to a park and ATE ME so he's stuck with me forever regardless of what he wants, but let's be clear here: _you don't know shit about Zayn as a person._ People don’t get cursed like that for no good reason. Zayn is an exact replica of Narcissus and that guy was a total asshole and born breaking everyone’s rules. I didn’t make him break any laws when we used to steal booze with the upper-class men, that was always HIS fucking idea!”

 

Liam guts churn as Louis stares him down.

 

“There’s a different side to Zayn you have never seen in your fucking life cause if you had, you’d know he had a scary monster living inside him even BEFORE he got sacrificed. He keeps secrets from you cause he doesn't want you to see how ugly he is inside. If you heard how he talks and acts when you’re not around, you’d be terrified of him. His violent and arrogant. Your impression of our fucked up relationship is an affectation Zayn has lead you to believe cause he's a narcissistic asshole with a fucking split personality. He made my life hell and treated me like shit throughout our entire relationship.”

 

Liam doesn’t know why Louis thinks he doesn’t know anything about Zayn. He’s seen him get into enough fights to know he’s got a short temper that tends to make him lash out violently but… that’s usually because people purposefully provoke him for that exact reason alone. Boy messing with Zayn to get his attention any way they can, which is probably why people came at Liam. You come for Liam, you’ll definitely get Zayn’s attention. Like how it’s a known fact that Zayn was like Regina George, _“One time, he punched me in the face. It was AWESOME!”_

 

Louis sits up straight, tossing out his cigarette as he gets deathly serious.

 

“I don't know where all of you get this twisted idea that I used him for sex cause that is the most blatant lie I’ve ever heard. We barely ever even had actual sex. All Zayn ever did was cheat on me constantly with whoever asked him to suck their dick and he drove me fucking insane. He didn’t give a single fuck about me. But I was too stupid to see past his bullshit because I was in love with him just like _everyone_ _else_ he openly hooked up with cause he's a fucking whore. He never seemed to noticed that he had a boyfriend for 3 years cause he doesn’t notice anything outside of himself. Cause everyone loves his dick and he loves _no one_. But he'll suck anyone with a pair of balls. Just ask your best-mate Hazza over there.”

 

Harry blushes as he’s looking at the ground.

 

Liam looks at the ground too as he thinks about what Zayn actually said about Louis when he explained their relationship a few days ago.

 

_‘Louis may have had a boyfriend for 3 years but I sure as hell didn't’_

 

Well that entire conversation makes this a bit anti-climatic. He’s right, Liam’s perception of their relationship was totally twisted. But then so was Louis’. Cause there was no “relationship” as far as Zayn was concerned. Liam’s not so sure if Zayn actually ever told Louis that now… But that’s really not any of Liam’s business. Louis continues with his side anyways.

 

“He has no respect for anything. Not even himself. Cause no self-respecting person would ever go and hook-up with people who treated him like a subhuman and THAT WASN’T ME. I would never do anything to hurt him, I loved him. Someone could call us fags right in our fucking face and he’d still be hooking up with them 5 minutes later cause he doesn’t care about ANYTHING unless he’s getting himself off. The only reason we stopped is because I started seeing Perrie, cause I didn’t want to be some guy he was hooking up with whenever he wanted. I wanted a relationship. He only hated me because of fucking Jade when she already knew about it. He was the one that fucking told her and started that rumour! In fact, he was just ITCHING to tell everyone about it cause he knew Perrie would deny it and never talk to me again if anyone else found out. Cause if it’s not him I’m in love with then I can’t have ANYONE. He loves being the centre of attention. But he was never gonna be the centre of my life ever again cause I was having a _fucking kid_ so he stopped talking to me altogether. After Jade died and Perrie DUMPED me, I tried to keep all our friendships in tact by he turned into a fucking psychopath! That fuckery was a complete mess from the beginning and he didn’t make it any easier. So maybe I deserve to be in hell for helping SOMEONE ELSE CHEAT but I really liked her so big fucking whoop. But just the way he acted with that alone even before he got possessed doesn’t paint even half the picture of how truly fucked up in the head he is.”

 

Maybe Zayn likes attention but Liam wouldn’t go as far to say he’s arrogant. Not really. That’s just an act. Cause he’s always had an audience that seemed like they expected so much from him. Whether it’s provoking him or trying to sleep with him or any way at all to get him to notice you, Zayn just did what was expected of him. Even if it was an act.

 

He didn’t have to act or exaggerate his personality with Liam. Zayn’s actually a really quietly, nerdy, deeply melancholy boy that never really seemed to have a cause for his sadness when he’s alone. He’s always thinking deeply and keeping people out. So maybe he is a little fucked up but obviously there’s a reason he acted like that. But he could always be himself when he was with Liam.

 

“He isn't the nice person he _pretends_ to be around you. He's always been a cheating, heartless ASSHOLE who treats everyone like shit without a care in the world. That Narcissus guy got _exactly_ what he deserved when he got cursed. I bet you’ve noticed he never really looks you in the eyes and when he does, he's only looking at himself because that’s his curse. Zayn will always be a charming _narcissist._ His attention makes you think he genuinely likes you but he'll never see past himself to ever actually see _you_. And nothing will ever change that. Not even death.”

 

That's almost exactly what Lux said.

 

_“He looks at himself instead of looking at you.”_

 

That’s probably the only actually true thing Louis has said. Cause Liam has wondered why Zayn's never really been able to look him in the eye that much. And when he did… if he’s really been looking at himself. Cause he told Liam he’s looking at himself and Liam's had enough experience with someone close to him that he loved never looking at him even once.

 

Now that Liam thinks about it, Zayn couldn't tell the difference in Liam's obvious transformation into a demon. And he's always been Narcissus. Maybe he still can’t really see anything but his own face… and he hates looking at himself. Obviously getting rid of his demons didn't break the curse. In fact… bringing his demons to life seems like it’s only made it worse. What good can being surrounded by your own demons bring?

 

“I don't know why Zayn acts the way he does with you cause with anyone else, he's an entirely different person. A _horrible_ person. You need to open your fucking eyes. You may think he’s in love with you but he's not. Why would he have been getting off all the people that HATE you? I’ll tell you why. He’s never thinking of you or anyone else but himself. Cause nobody will ever change his natural instinct to be a selfish narcissist. Not even you. He’s not really killing Lux for you. Lux is doing that willingly cause he hates being trapped too so they were probably gonna do this anyways, it just HAPPENS to also be the solution to your problem too. He’s never been thinking about you when he was hooking up with me or any of your other tormentors. He’s never even been thinking about ME when he was hooking up with me. Lux is no different than him. They are exactly alike and it’s _terrifying_ that there’s two of him. One looking into the mirror and the other one looking out. Lux is using me to get one off and relieve his hunger everyday cause EVERY FUCKING THING WITH THEM IS ABOUT THEMSELVES. You see him as this perfect little angel when he's actually a demon and he ruined my fucking life. He got sent to hell because fucked up people like him belong in hell and he dragged me down with him and he doesn’t even care. Do you know how that feels? To love someone your entire life knowing they're never gonna even look at you?”

 

Liam doesn’t say anything, cause yeah. He does know how that feels. He knows exactly how that feels. He had a dad that acted like Liam never even existed. But Liam can’t say that because it’ll drive him over an edge he’s been too afraid to go near.

 

“Of course you don't know how this feels cause you get to move on with your lives. You never have to see him again so you’ll NEVER know.” He tiffs at Liam’s silence, Liam feeling his tears trying to come up but unable to break out fully as he holds them back.

 

“Loving someone who doesn’t even see you is practically suicide. Loving them more than you love yourself is hate. I hated myself so much it landed me in hell forever. Nothing about Zayn is love. He hates himself and everyone around him. That curse brought him down here cause this is where he belongs.”

 

For some reason, those words strike Liam really hard. A fist sized thump against his heart. Cause Liam knows Zayn doesn’t care about the fact that saving him is literal suicide even if it means being trapped in hell forever. Loving someone more than you care about your own life is direful.

 

“Your life may not be perfect but at least you have one still. My life ended and I’m never even gonna see what my kid even looks like.” He sniffs, wiping his nose.

 

“Just some _idiot_ that Zayn Malik is fucking. This hell is the same as it’s always been for me. So _fuck you.”_

 

Louis wipes the tears off his face and it's the first time Liam has seen him as an actual person with feelings. _Broken_ feelings. Not just some dick who used Zayn. Some dick who got fucked up over Zayn. Cause he can't use someone he never had. But he can be in love with them. Even if he knew they'd never love him back. No matter how horrible Louis is, he didn’t deserve to die. None of them deserve what’s happened to them. Not Louis or Liam or Harry or Niall or Tom or Jade or the other 50 people that burned alive or got/will get murdered soon or even Zayn.

 

His broken heart he just exposed is concealed again as he looks at Liam with his dead blue eyes like Zayn’s.

 

“Go back to the surface where you’ll never have to see my face ever again while I rest in peace in HELL.”

 

“What the FUCK!?”

 

Everyone’s head turns to the side as an angry voice Liam’s heard before cuts across the room from the threshold of a hallway. There’s a guy standing there, shirtless and in basketball shorts.

 

He’s got dark hair and pale skin with a square jaw, chewing on a toothpick as he gapes at the car crashed into the ground. He kind of looks like Sodapop from the outsiders, like a 1950s greaser. Except… he doesn’t have eyes. This guy is obviously a demon. Also he has what looks like a body slung over his shoulder.

 

He looks nothing like Zayn.

 

He walks into the room then, looking between the car and the three boys in the living room.

 

“Louis what the fuck happened in here? I leave for an hour and there's deadass a _car accident?_ How do you manage these things?” He’s got an American accent. It’s not a voice he’s heard from Zayn exactly. It’s a voice he’s heard in Lux sometimes when his accents get weirdly jumbled up. It still sort of sounds like Zayn though but if Zayn was from New York somewhere.

 

Louis puts his hands up innocently.

 

“It wasn’t me! It was them,”

 

Liam and Harry gulp as they’re pointed out.

 

He looks Harry and Liam up and down.

 

“And who the fuck are they?”

 

“The dopey one is Liam and the tall one is Harry.” Louis rolls his eyes as he stands up, walking towards the kitchen.

 

“Liam, Harry meet Avaritia.”

 

Avaritia smiles at Liam with his mouth open slightly.

 

“Holy shit, so you this famous lover then huh? You know all this shit is your fucking fault.” He drops the body on the ground oh so casually and the smell that comes from it tells Liam that person is most definitely DEAD.

 

Louis wasn't joking at all when he said he collects bodies for sport… and wears them. He must be in one right now.  

 

Liam doesn’t even know what to say. He can’t take his eyes off the body. Another demon comes into the living room from the hall right behind him.

 

This one is really tall, at least 7 feet, and morbidly obese.

 

There’s fat literally spilling out of every part of his form. He’s wearing brown poncho sweater that almost looks like a dress and sandals with fuzzy socks. He’s got golden brown skin and long wavy black hair, so long he can pull it up into a neat bun on his head. There also appears to be a small swirling spiral tattooed on his forehead. He sort of looks like an Indian monk.

 

Aside from all that and the fact that he doesn’t have eyes either, he has the basics of Zayn’s face… if Zayn weighed 500 pounds.  

 

“Holy shit, did this fall through the marsh?” He murmurs as he looks at the crashed car. Same voice as Zayn but high pitched and very posh. Like the Queen.

 

“That's it, I'm covering it tomorrow. There's people here now, someone's gonna get hurt again. Remember when Luxie was blind for hours from all that bloody glass?” He shakes his head slowly.

 

He looks over at Liam then, tilting his head curiously.

 

“Who’s he?”

 

“Zayn’s boyfriend.” Avaritia smirks.

 

“Oh my wow…” his void eyes widen.

 

 _“Like… Adara?”_ He whispers. Avaritia squints back at him.

 

 _“Epsilon Canis Majoris.”_ He clarifies, gesturing to a tattoo wrapping around his wrist. It’s in another language. Avaritia shakes his head at him as he squints.

 

“Obviously he’s human, genius. How should I know?”

 

“I dunno… he could be.” He shrugs.

 

“Still pretty…” He nods anyways as if he’s impressed before going to check out the car, pushing it down so it’s sitting the right way easily.

 

Liam and Harry both look at each other, totally confused by that exchange.

 

“Oh and Ava,” Louis sticks his head out of the kitchen briefly.

 

“Liam made some improvements to your TV.” He smiles before disappearing into the kitchen.

 

Avaritia looks at his broken TV and freezes for a moment before he’s standing in front of it in the blink of an eye, crouching down in front of it in shock.

 

 _“Habibiti!”_ He shrieks. Zayn used to call Liam _"habibi"_  - the male version of that word- when they were kids so he knows it means ‘ _my beloved’_  in Arabic _._ Spend enough time with people who speak many languages and you might learn something.

 

Avaritia caresses it in horror before he’s standing again and turning to Liam slowly.

 

 _“You did this to her?”_ He says low. Harry snorts a little at the fact that his TV was a ‘her’.

 

Liam swallows hard, backing up as Avaritia stalks towards him, backing him into the wall and grabbing him by the collar of his shirt roughly. He smells like decay and it makes Liam want to gag.

 

“Ava she’s a bloody TV. Just get another one.” The bigger demon shakes his head.

 

“Do you fucking speak ENGLISH? _Aliquid?_ ” He yells at Liam.

 

“Y-yes,” Liam stammers as he stares into his body. He can't see eyes anywhere.

 

Suddenly, Liam can't see anything at all. It’s the weirdest sensation ever to be pulled from his body by force. It hurts like hell…. like there's a vacuum nozzle shoved down his throat.

 

Harry watches in horror as Liam's body seizes up when half of Avaritia’s face opens up wide, revealing rows of sharp fangs like a shark as he sucks the wispy translucent substance of Liam right out of his body. It comes out of his face and into Avaritia’s mouth slowly.

 

“AVA STOP!” the bigger demon screams at him.

 

“Do something!” Harry yells at him but he shakes his head cowardly.

 

“Conscientious objector here….”

 

Great. A demon hippie. What the hell kind of underworld is this?

 

Harry side steps at the wall in terror before breaking into a run for the bedroom door, banging against it frantically.

 

“ZAYN! ZAYN OPEN THE DOOR!” He screams, looking back at Liam's face being sucked out until Avaritia sinks his fangs into his throat. Liam's eyes roll backwards as he goes limp then.

 

“Why are you still here!?” Lux barks at Harry, floating at the door when it swings open, making Harry fall against him.

 

Lux doesn't push him off. He's too busy watching his brother eat Liam as his eyes go wide in shock.

 

Avaritia let's Liam's limp body fall on the ground, spitting out the part of his throat he just bit to the ground with a grimace.

 

 _“Fuck,”_  he scoffs in disgust.

 

Harry hears a deep rumbling in his ear that's pressed against Lux’s chest that sounds like brewing thunder mixed with a growling lion, like there’s animal inside him. Actually… it might be his stomach growling. His pupils grow over his eyes until they're black and he looks like a scary demon again as he moves Harry to the side carefully, his face twisting from disbelief to rage.

 

In the next instant, Lux is across the room and his hand is around his brother's throat, lifting him up and slamming him into the stone ground. The ground should cave when he hits it.

 

Harry has to look away but he can hear the bones Lux is breaking in his neck. When he looks again, Avaritia’s body is totally lifeless as Lux pulls another face entirely out of his body through the neck. Zayn's face. Well… sort of Zayn.

 

He's much taller than Zayn, like the hippie demon. Taller and skinnier if that’s even possible. His face is too long. And his skin is golden brown like his brother. And he still doesn't have eyes.

 

But his hair is wavy and shaggy like Zayn’s and shaved at one side in an undercut, the black dyed a wicked violet all over. The style is actually really cool. The topical features are the same though. He’s even got two full sleeves of tattoos. Like he could be Zayn's older, cooler-styled brother.

 

The growl in Lux’s chest tears out of him finally, bouncing off the walls and every surface around them as he pulls his brother up to his feet then, choking him against the wall as his own feet come up on both sides of Avaritia’s face, floating in front of him and barring his fangs menacingly.   

 

 _“You think that's_ **_FUCKING_ ** _funny?”_ He growls in his face, hitting his head against the sandy stone wall in emphasis, making him wince as the wall cracks on impact.

 

A panic-stricken Harry quickly kneels over Liam’s pale body while the demons are too distracted with trying to kill each other. He's bleeding from the neck profusely. Harry feels his wrist for a pulse. He's still alive.

 

“You know Adonis came by looking for you not too long ago. How do you think he'll feel about you fucking Adara? Which you've turned into an abomination you sick fuck.” Avaritia hisses. He’s still got the same voice.

 

“G… get them out _now.”_ Lux says low. The hippie demon, G, nervously backs towards Liam and Harry. If he’s afraid, Harry supposes he REALLY should be.

 

 

“You gonna burn me for biting him?” Avaritia spits, pushing Lux off him but Lux only floats in front of his, yanking the collar of his white tank top back with him.

 

 _“Nihil spurcius est te!”_ Lux hisses, along with a few more sharp non-english words as he throws him on the ground, pouncing on top of him.

 

Below him, Avaritia’s body twists around until his limbs contort to be slim and scaled and his face opens up wide again, only two fangs sharpening and growing a few more inches long this time until there’s suddenly a huge black snake under Lux. He’s got the face of a king cobra and the massive body of an anaconda.

 

It wraps around Lux with lightning speed, constricting him, making him wince as it hisses in his face with it's mouth open wider, terrifying fangs on display. Harry swears he can hear Lux’s bones snapping as he yells in pain with his eyes squeezed closed, being lifted into the air as the snake slithers across the floor with him and slams him back into the wall leading into the hall, demolishing it. His back definitely breaks.

 

G quickly scurries to the bedroom door now, pulling Harry and Liam to their feet on the way, physically picking Liam up and putting him over his shoulder since he's passed out still.

 

“ _Why won’t you help him?”_ Harry hisses at the demon dragging him away since Lux is being squeezed to death behind them. Which means Zayn is being constricted too.

 

 _“Are you bloody insane? I can’t fight him! Luxie can handle himself. It’s gonna get really hot in here so we need to get out now before he loses his shit.”_ He whispers back to Harry.

 

Harry looks behind them as they go, right as Lux manages to pull his arms out grab the snake’s powerful jaws before he can bite into him.

 

 _“You wanna fucking eat something?”_ Lux grunts with a pained grimace as he forces it’s mouth open wider until he’s almost tearing them apart as the snake writhes around.

 

_“Eat this,”_

 

Lux screeches into it’s wide open mouth and he sounds like fucking Godzilla. The sound makes Harry's ears almost bleed.

 

As Lux screeches like a demonic beast, he spews out strange black smoke that almost looks like fire from his mouth with golden embers flaking around it, right down the snake’s throat, digging his fingers into his jaw as he biceps flex in exertion to keep the snake mouth open. He overpowers his brother, floating in front of him now as he lets go of Lux.

 

The black fire crawls down his bare arms as well, seeping out of Zayn's skin and wrapping around Avaritia with a mind of it’s own and it chokes him up, like Lux is the one doing the constricting now. Lux stops breathing fire finally as he lets the snake fall on the ground, continuing to burn as it tries to crawl away. Lux lowers slowly, letting his feet dangle lazily behind him.

 

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going Ava? I wanna finish playing.” He smiles as he snaps his back into it’s natural position, stretching his arms up above his head and cracking his neck from side to side before his right fist ignites in black and golden flames, bending over and grabbing the burning snake by it’s tail and whipping it back into him with ease, yanking him up like he’s starting a lawnmower. That snake has to weigh a few tonnes at least.

 

Harry does what any logical human being would do in this situation, fumbling for his phone, getting the camera out with shaking fingers as he pesses record.

 

Lux catches the snake by its head, reaching his fiery hand into it’s mouth for something. The fire grows down his arms again and all over the snake, swirling around them as it engulfs them both in dark flames. But it doesn't seem hurt to Lux. It just sticks to his skin. Avaritia, however… is burning alive from the inside and out as he twists around, hissing in agony while Lux laughs with his arm still down it’s throat, letting the fire come out of his skin and surround the snake until Harry can’t even see either of them anymore. Okay so his brother was right. He can handle himself MORE than just fine. He’s not playing any games even though he’s laughing like he is. He’s fucking killing his brother.

 

Harry quickly shuts the bedroom door so the fire doesn't touch them as it spreads fast across the room and ignites in the air. That was the wildest thing he’s ever seen in his life. And he got it on tape. Anthony and Ben were gonna lose their fucking minds.


	8. Hell : Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry learns more about Zayn's past. Liam reaches a peak in hell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I’m sorry about my brothers. They fight all the time. If that touches us, we’ll get hurt really badly.” G says sheepishly as he lays Liam down on the bed and tucks him gently.

 

“What is that stuff?” Harry asks as he watches it back on his phone.

 

“Hellfire. Like outside… only he knows how to make his way hotter than outside cause his turns black. He doesn’t usually take it that far though. I dunno where he’s learned that kind of behaviour. He’s been fighting pretty dirty since he got back. We definitely weren’t raised to be like that so I dunno what’s gotten into him lately. He could kill him with that if he isn’t careful. Ava is just defending himself but Lux has an advantage over him here. Cause Lust is full of the most uncontrollable hellfire in the underworld and he’s the only one out of the three of us who knows how to use it.”

 

They can still hear growling and hissing on the other side of the heated door, making the house feel like the inside of an oven now, as if it wasn’t hot enough already.

 

Harry can tell him exactly what’s gotten into Lux. He’s in ZAYN.

 

Zayn was born a fighter and showed absolutely no mercy to anyone. Except of course Liam. Most people should know not to fuck with him. Especially with Liam. Actually… that was the only time he got into a physical fight with someone. No matter how much bigger than Zayn they were, he learned how to fight dirty cause of his size. He was always Mikey’s favourite out of Harry’s friends.

 

“Is Lux usually a conscientious objector like you?” Harry smiles. He laughs, looking down at his sandals.

 

“No, he can lose himself very easily. But… there’s a danger if he goes too far cause his core pit is lust. Lust is like hellfire, hard to control. In fact, you can’t really control it at all. Ace didn’t want Lux to ever end up like our brother… Ira,” His faces flushes when he says that name.

 

“He was always afraid that Luxie wouldn’t be able to control his power either.”

 

“Ira… means wrath, yeah?” Harry asks when he gets quiet. He looks back up at Harry, flipping his hand dismissively.

 

“Don’t worry about him, he’s far away from here. Lux can control himself, it’s fine. He totally stole that first move from Godzilla. I bought it for him to watch last year. He likes stuff like that.” He adds with a laugh as he lightens the mood again. Harry’s brows rise in confusion as he smiles.

 

“Really?”

 

He thought that reminded him of the last Godzilla movie he watched. Atomic breath only with fire instead.

 

Harry leans over the other side, looking at Liam closely. He looks like a sleeping ghost.  

 

“What did Avaritia do to him?"

 

The demon looks over Liam carefully as he sits on the side, making the bed sink sideways drastically.

 

"Well… he was _trying_ to drain him. Draining is something demons do to take souls. You can suck it out like he was doing… or rip apart the vessel and eat it… there’s lots of ways to drain things. Liam has a soft, subtle body so he'd be _really_ easy to eat. But there’s something in his body demons aren’t supposed to eat or touch or we’ll be sick so, luckily Ava didn’t get very far.”

 

Harry looks at him closely, poking his arm.

 

“Soft?” he doesn't feel that soft. The demon laughs.

 

“No not soft like that. A soft body is a corporeal form that is on a subtle plane of existence. Right between physical and nonphysical.”

 

Harry nods in understanding. That made sense seeing that Liam's had spent most of his life disassociating on astral planes and what not.

 

“Liam James Payne is what we on the surface like to call a dreamer.” Harry explains as he introduces him properly.

 

“Someone who’s physically here on earth who often gets lost outside his body, out of our reality on another plane of existence in between ours. Up there with the clouds.”

 

The demons laughs as he shakes his head.

 

“He’s not as lost as you think. Liam has a soft body on a _subtle_ plane of existence. A subtle plane is in between a physical plane and an astral plane. So he can go on either at will. Having a soft body lets him slip out with ease.” he tells him, and Harry feels like he’s being upstaged here. He’s never heard of a subtle plane of existence… or a soft body.

 

“You seem confused.”

 

“No I’m not,” Harry shakes his head as he looks at Liam.

 

“I just… didn’t know there was a space… between in between spaces…?”

 

“There’s lots of physical and nonphysical worlds mate.”

 

Harry nods.

 

“Yeah I’m aware, I just didn’t realise someone could… live in both at the same time.”

 

“Yeah well that depends on what type of body you have. There are millions of different forms. The four mains ones I usually see are as follows: Number one is you. A corporeal body, from up there on the plane of Earth’s surface. Your body is fully formed and physical but it can allow you to go on different nonphysical planes like, mental planes and energy planes without dying easily.”  

 

Harry nods. Drugs usually got him to said planes.

 

“Number 2 is a celestial or astral body, which is like a star or sun on the plane of outer space. Those bodies aren’t physically formed too much at all but they can touch physical things. Like the heat of the sun can touch you and make your skin appear darker but you could never touch the sun.

 

He looks down at Liam then.

 

“Number 3 is what we’ve got right here. A soft, subtle body. Liam can slip out of his body on a subtle plane of existence, physical non-physical, outer space… almost anywhere.”

 

“Almost?”  

 

“If he left his body outside of this house… he’d die.”

 

“Why outside of this house…?” Harry frowns.

 

“Cause there’s nothing out there but darkness. Subtle bodies are usually made for the purposes of carrying light cause light in the only thing that can pass through it. Light can exist anywhere, physical or not, in outer space, on Earth, in between space, ect. The only place it can’t survive is in pure darkness. Though… I’ve never even seen a human with a soft body before. I really didn’t know beings like this even existed.” He shrugs.

 

Harry blinks with wide eyes. A body of light? That sounds like… a _star_ or something. He looks at Liam's resting face closely, wondering what Liam’s soul must be like inside. Harry’s always thought Liam was incandescent. Maybe he disassociates so much cause he's not supposed to be trapped in a body.

 

“So he really is like a… _celestial being.”_ Harry murmurs to himself.

 

“I dunno... there’s something wrong with him. Something’s in him that's made him darker that’s not supposed to be in there called _kakos_. If it spreads too far in him, he’ll die. Ava would’ve been really sick if he swallowed it. He’ll be okay. It’s still in Liam’s body somewhere so it’ll heal him on it’s own. It doesn’t really translate in English,” He explains.

 

“Inner malice.” Harry nods as he gestures to Liam's stomach.

 

“It’s in his gut. Lux calls it a pit.”

 

The giant looks over a Harry slowly.

 

“You know about _kakos?”_

 

Harry nods from side to side.

 

“A little I guess. I’ve never known what it was actually called. I can sense stuff like that most of the time.” He usually has to be really high in order to actually see it but whatever. He doesn’t say that part out loud.

 

“It’s tainted his aura and made him darker inside. He didn’t used to be like this. He actually was really clean before but Zayn bit him so he’s a daemon now.” Harry shrugs nonchalantly but he gapes at Harry in awe. Liam was practically an angel before this shit escaped from hell and attached to him.

 

Although he doesn’t have eyes, this demon’s gaze doesn’t feel so acutely distressing like Lux cause Lux is always out to seduce someone. His gaze seems gentle. Literally a gentle giant.

 

“Wow… I’ve never met an indigo before. You’re just as perceptive as they say.” He murmurs.

 

“I’m Tony by the way.” He smiles politely.

 

“Tony?” Harry almost laughs. It’s such a human name.

 

“I know a Tony. Well, _Anthony,_ but we call him Tony. I’m Harry.”

 

That reminds Harry….he needs to text Anthony like as soon as possible. And Mikey.

 

He gets out his phone quickly and opens his messages but pauses as he looks at the time, frozen solid. According to his phone… it’s still half past noon. Harry squints in utter confusion, looking down at his watch. It’s not moving at all. His gaze comes back up slowly as he stares ahead outside, seeing the hell they’re in. He has no idea what plane of existence the underworld is on but wherever they are… time isn’t moving.

 

“Yeah I know. Luxie told me you were an indigo but he’s such a bloody liar I didn’t believe him. Narcissus always had a knack for making very… interesting friends.” Tony snorts.

 

Harry wants to ask him what plane are they on right now as he’s obviously way more  knowledgeable on esoteric cosmology than what Harry will ever be. Cause Harry learned from the theories of dead humans who thought they knew everything. This is a demon who lives it for himself.

 

“It’s my anglicized name for Gluttony.” He points to his wrist where a few tattoos are wrapping around like a bracelet. It looks like scribble. Harry has not a clue what language it is.

 

“But that’s such an ugly word… I prefer Tony. Or G. The shorter the better. Lux is the same way. He hates his name cause it unfortunately wraps all over our arms. He wanted to choose his own name but, no one chooses their birth name.” He laughs, looking over Liam again, tilting his head to the side to look at the bite in his neck. He grimaces at the sight of it. Even the way he expresses his face is just like Zayn.

 

Gluttony. Well, that explains the weight.

 

“You guys get your names tattooed?”

 

“Yeah but not like humans. It’s like a birthmark. Tells our name and where we’re from. We’re all from different places.”

 

“Where are you from?” Harry asks curiously.

 

“Gluttony.” He says.

 

“Huh?” Harry’s brows furrow.

 

“I’m from _Gluttony._ 3rd level of hell?”

 

“Oh… right.” Harry’s brow knits a little. He meant what part from Narcissus. But regions of hell were interesting too.

 

“Is that why all your accents are so different?”

 

“What do you mean?” Tony looks at him again.

 

“Well, Avaritia sounds American, you sound like you're from here. Lux sounds…. I don’t even know… his voice kind of changes.”

 

“Oh Ava used to live on the surface in New York. That’s why he talks like that. We all speak many languages but we technically live in Manningtree in this house so we’re southern English. You know like Nars. Lux doesn't really have a “voice” so to speak.”

 

Harry's head tilts to the side.

 

“Then… how can you hear him speak?”

 

“I can't really… explain in words you’d understand.”

 

Harry down at his fingers as he starts name off languages, ticking each finger in the process.

 

“Italian, Spanish, variants of any Italic branch of Indo-European languages I can understand pretty basically.”

 

“You understand Latin?” he deadpans.

 

“Sounds like Italian… I read it in books a lot.”

 

“It's a _dead_ language on the surface.”

 

“I read really old books.” Harry shrugs which makes Tony laugh, looking back at Liam.

 

“Umm… _okay,_ ” He does Zayn’s thinking gesture with his hand, tracing the underline of his chin absentmindedly as he smiles.

 

“Luxie is what you would call _asomatous_. I guess that’s an old english word to describe him.”

 

Harry nods. He already knew that.

 

“Yeah bodiless. He's an emotion, he said that.”

 

Tony shakes his head.

 

“It's more than just bodiless. It's… _everything-_ less. That’s the fourth body I was gonna mention I’ve encountered. The… non-existent one on a non-existent plane. We're all emotions but Lux is different from the rest of us. He didn’t manifest in something physical in Nars’ body like we did.”

 

Something non-physical manifesting into something non-existent? That sounds like a paradox.

 

“How exactly is a demon manifested then?” Harry asks. None of the books he read talk about it in depth and this is the most reliable source he’s ever gonna find.

 

“All demons come from kakos. I guess you can call that a pit of pure darkness and evil. It’s the very core of our being. The underworld is filled with it, which is why Liam wouldn’t survive for long outside of his body out there. Cause pure darkness destroys light. It’s pretty much the source of all our power. But we’re the kind of demons that manifested in a human first. We came from Nars. The 7 deadliest sins of humanity turn into kakos when they’re purged out of the human body. Once it’s kakos, it can never be turned back into an emotion. After Nars purged his sins it became kakos. That fused that with another part of his body he sacrificed and shoved it right out and BOOM!”

 

Harry jumps at his exploding hand gesture.

 

“You’ve got us.” He smiles. Harry nods.

 

Demonic transference in a nutshell. So, to get the demon out, you sacrifice a part of your body. Narcissus sacrificed 7 parts of his body to get the 7 deadly sins of his humanity out. To get the demon in, you make the sacrifice impure. Like making a virgin sacrifice without using a real virgin. Lux’s kakos is in Zayn’s chest. Harry understands now that Zayn’s gonna have to either purge his heart, ribs or lungs.

 

“So… what part of him did you manifest in?” Harry asks so he won’t think about Zayn and start freaking crying.

 

“Narcissus purged his gluttony into a rib. Ace came from his eyes. Morosa came from his skin. Ira came from his heart. Lux is-”

 

“His reflection.”

 

Tony nods.

 

“Right, he sprang from the reflection of vanity in Narcissus. Which makes him asomatous.”

 

Harry gets what he means now. A reflection doesn’t have a physical form that exists in _any_ world. So his body is non-existent. He’s not supposed to exist without Narcissus but he pulled Lux out of him so... here he is, _existing_ . Lux’s existence literally breaks every known law in the universe. The law of gender. Laws of attraction. The laws of reality. The laws of space. The law of _everything_.

 

“Me and you were born from something physical, you a womb, me a rib. Luxie was born from a reflection so he doesn’t have a real physical form. He doesn't have a real voice or face of his own. A reflection is sound, heat, light and thought. Lust adds kakos. Combine all that and you get consciousness. A.K.A. Luxie!”

 

Harry’s brow rises a little.

 

“Did you just say a reflection has… _thought?”_

 

“No… I said a reflection IS thought. That was Lux is.” Tony continues to blow Harry’s mind.

 

“Lux is able talk like us and move around on his own now cause of the kakos at his core.”

 

So just as Harry thought, without his pit, Lux is just a reflection. But he’s not JUST a reflection. When Tony says he sprang from Nars’ reflection, he doesn’t mean the one in the marsh. He means a reflection from Narcissus’ body itself. Like… a _thought._ Lux is a literal REFLECTION. Which is another word for a thought. It reminds Harry of that old Latin phrase: _‘Cogito ergo sum’_. Means, “I think, therefore I am.”

 

Philosophers have used this for centuries to prove existence. Meaning, if you can think, then you exist. Cause a thought can’t exist without the thinker, a reflection doesn’t exist without the person it’s reflecting. Lux is a thought that exists without the thinker. A reflection without the person he’s reflecting. His body doesn’t exist because… he doesn’t really exist. But… he does somehow. A plane of non-existence. His pit gave him an extant of life.

 

“Holy fucking… _shit.”_ Harry doesn’t even know what to say as he makes the realisation. Tony explains Lux to him even more.

 

“Even though Luxie’s kakos made him an incubus, he was Nars’ reflection before that. He’s still instinctively prone to act as such even now. When he was born, he had to learn how to act like a normal demon. He didn’t know how to do anything on his own and no one had ever seen something like him before. He couldn’t even talk or walk unless someone else did first. He still doesn’t really like to walk even now. He was almost like a baby. Ace and Morosa took on the burden of raising him, to teach him everything cause they’re the oldest. Eventually, Ace just opened a library academy for young peculiar demons to learn how to… be functional demons. Almost like a school for children like you. Lux had to learn how to behave like a demon instead of a reflection or he’d never get around anywhere at all cause he’d just mimic whatever he saw. Me and Ace tried to teach him how to walk for ages but, that was the only thing that never really stuck. I guess it’s hard to walk without a body.”

 

Harry guesses it’s hard to do ANYTHING when you don’t really even exist… Or when you’re not supposed to exist anyways. He’s never been more blown away upon hearing something so utterly impossible.

 

Tony smiles to himself as he reminisces.

 

“Gosh I remember when i first saw him… he was so cute. He’d just follow me around everywhere.” He snorts before grimacing.

 

“Now he’s a bratty little shit.” He shakes his head before looking back at Harry’s stunned face.

 

“Anyways, yeah. Sorry I sort of run off track a lot. Answering your original question, sure, you can hear him. He’s learned to speak many languages just fine but his voice doesn't sound like anything when he's not mimicking someone. That's why you can't place his accent. He hasn’t got one.”

 

That was the weirdest thing Harry has ever heard. So even if a reflection has two definitions, Lux fits both. When he squints a little, trying to picture how his voice doesn’t sound like anything, Tony sighs

 

“You’ll understand what I mean when he talks normally. I don’t know why he’s talking like that right now. Cause he kinda sounds like Nars at the moment and he's never met Nars before. But I guess he’s heard his voice now in Zayn. Mimicking people is kind of his thing aside from the power of lust. All of us have different qualities and appearances. He still knows how to reflect. Naturally, he just looks like Nars but he can easily sound, look, or act like anyone he wants when he's outside of Zayn. Even you. Or look like nothing at all. He can let you see or hear whatever he wants you to. The power of lust gives him the ability to make you feel whatever you want. That sound he’s making when he spits hellfire is something he literally heard in Godzilla.”

 

That was interesting. So Lux really used to be a literal reflection and now he's outside of the “mirror”, a.k.a. Narcissus’ mind… or maybe this is the mirror. This is place called the Narcissus marsh after all. He realizes that this house is in an empty pocket of space because it's in the marsh. It's basically the inside of a mirror… that Zayn’s reflection created.

 

“So Avaritia is a New Yorker huh...” Harry shakes the shattered thoughts out of his mind. Thinking about Lux was almost too much to even comprehend. He tries to picture a demon living in the city, wondering what on Earth it could possibly get out of life up there.

 

It sounds scary but… after meeting them and learning more about them, demons really aren’t that scary. Evil and menacing when they want to be but… not _totally_ petrifying when they’re calm. Cause these type of demons aren’t pure evil. They were different parts of Zayn before they were alive. And Zayn’s a really calm person naturally so, it makes sense that his demons are too. Except for when he’s provoked… then he’s scary. Harry can’t even imagine what his actual wrath must be like. Tony said Ira is far away from here so hopefully, that demon doesn’t make an appearance before they leave.

 

“Yeah, Ava lived in New York with Morosa for decades. They used to steal bodies they’d use to walk around in on the surface for centuries, traveling around the world. They usually stayed in New York after America was founded.”

 

Harry can’t figure out what sin Morosa is. That word can mean ‘girlfriend’ or ‘sweetheart’ in Italian.

 

He can take that last thought back about Zayn’s demons. Some of them ARE totally terrifying. Coming to the surface from hell to possess bodies? That’s _horrible._ That’s what a demon could get out of life on the surface. Human souls.

 

“How can you guys get to the surface? Aren’t you bodiless?” Harry is careful to keep the alarm out of his voice.

 

Tony nods.

 

“Yeah but physical objects can pass through the marsh. The underworld is on an etheric plane so anything physical can come here. Bodies have been falling through the marsh for a thousand years. Ava, Morosa, Dia and Ira used them to sneak out all the time when they were younger, before I was even born. But if Nars caught them doing it, he’d tell them off and make them stop.”

 

A deep frown comes across Tony’s face as he reflects, looking at Liam.

 

“Things… changed around here after Nars found out about them going to the surface.” He murmurs.

 

“He and Ira got into a really awful fight over it and Ira got sent to Cocytus after. Dia ran away and went to work for the keeper. Narcissus wasn’t the same after that happened.”

 

“How so?” Harry urges, feeling his stomach crawl with sickness.

 

“I dunno… he was just happier before. After his fight with Ira, he just wasn’t himself anymore. He stopped going out on adventures Ace and got more serious I guess. And then he just disappeared. We found Lux in the house alone. He didn’t know where he was… or who he was or anything which was strange because we already knew who and what we were when we came out,” He gestures to his birthmark on wrist.

 

“But we always had Nars. He told us what we were. Luxie never met Nars cause he left after he purged him.” Even though he doesn’t have eyes, Tony’s expression looks like if he did they might have tears in them as the thought of Narcissus leaving brings a feeling a sadness into the air. He shrugs then, casting aside the thought.

 

“But eventually, things got back to normal I guess after we got used to Nars being gone. Ava and Morosa still go to the surface now all the time to steal more lively bodies… you know cause they smell a little better than dead ones. I always thought bodies were gross so I just stick to the underworld.” Tony shrugs. Harry gapes at him.

 

“I know it sounds horrible. But we’re not all like that. Me and Ace don’t get out too much anywhere at all anymore. I live in Gluttony most of the time but, this house is like the best place in hell to rest in. The space is so clean and fresh. I don’t know why anyone would ever want to leave here.”

 

“Rest.” Harry repeats. Hell is supposed to be for eternal suffering. Not eternal rest. So this is a literal empty space connecting hell and earth. Tony nods.

 

“Since you guys are here I’ve got to cover the ceiling to the marsh… it’s so dangerous. Random things always fall through it. This one time a few years ago, all these glass bottles literally flew through the ceiling. Lux couldn’t see for hours from all the glass that got in his face. The downside to having eyes.”

 

Harry’s face drains. Mikey did that two years ago. If Lux finds out who did that……… Harry needs to keep his brother far away from this. He has to go back to London as soon as possible.

 

“He’s got eyes?” Harry squints.

 

Tony nods.

 

“Yup. The only one that does. Morosa was always kind of jealous he got eyes. They’re probably the most seductive tool in the world.”

 

“Who’s Morosa?” Harry finally asks.

 

“Lux’s older twin.”

 

“He’s got a twin sister?” Harry’s eyes widen. Tony laughs.

 

“How do you know Morosa his sister and not brother?”

 

“Well, Morosa can mean girlfriend in Italian so I just figured-”

 

“Wow indigos are like really smart…”

 

“Thanks.” Harry smiles. He likes that term a lot better than hipster alien like how everyone usually calls him.

 

Tony smirks at him like he’s thinking of a test.

 

“ _Superbia Delectatio Morosa_. Do you know what that means?”

 

Harry thinks for a moment.

 

“The emotion?”

 

Tony nods.

 

 _Delectatio morosa_ together literally translates to “the enjoyment in pain or evil thoughts” in Latin. Like masochism and sadism. People who find pleasure in pain. Being spanked and choked. A.K.A. _sadomasochism_ . Or even BDSM if you want to get really freaky _._ Only, you’re the only whose inflicting the pain. Now when you throw in _superbia_. You get a whole other name. That’s pride in Italian and Latin.

 

As Harry thinks about it, it becomes clear to him that Lux’s twin sister is obviously a succubus like him.

 

“Pride in the misfortune of others. They’re succubi.” Harry says easily. What an evil name.

 

Tony shakes his head as he smiles.

 

“Wow that’s exactly right.” He laughs.

 

“Morosa and Luxuria. Pride and lust are gemel, or only coming in a pair. So they’re not twins in the sense that they look alike. They’re just both lilin-demons. Succubus and incubus. Morosa is the second oldest after Ace.”

 

That makes Harry wonder what Lux’s actual name is. Pride in the Misfortune of Others and Luxury in what? Tony continues to explain the dynamic of Lux and his twin sin.

 

“After Luxie was born, she came back here cause we knew he was gonna be an incubus and she was the only one who could help him learn to control his power. She taught him everything he knows about how to be an incubus. Morosa lives up to her name though. She comes by every once in awhile but she can never stay in one place for too long. She doesn’t like being bored. She might take a random trip to Cocytus one day cause she feels like battling against a titan. Or go to the surface, take some humans after seducing them. Ava lived on the surface just for the bodies. Morosa did it for fun. She’s unpredictable like that. You guys _probably_ shouldn’t meet her. Lux learned how to be a trickster from her. If he didn’t see on TV or read in one of Ace’s book, he learned it from Morosa.”

 

Harry gulps with wide eyes. Thinking about the revelation that demons casually live on the surface and seduce and possess humans makes the hairs rise on his head eerily. You wouldn’t even know you were talking to a demon. Like when Lux came to school the day after the fire and ate Tom. Harry had no idea there was anything wrong with him then. His vibe was weird but, he thought he was just messed up from the fire like everyone else.

 

Not even to mention that some of them go around killing people like it’s a hunting game or wearing them like clothes. Harry supposes this might be karma against humanity. Cause humans do the same thing. Killing living things, whether it’s to eat them or hang them up as trophies or wear them as our own clothes just cause of the natural dominance over them. We never think about how it’d be if something hunted us the same literal way. No wonder Nars had regrets. If he was anything like Zayn, Harry bets his regrets were setting his his demons lose on the world after finding out they were killing people. Cause Zayn can’t even stand the thought of animals dying, let alone innocent human lives.

 

“Don’t worry. Ace would never let Lux do that stuff. He’s too young to even go to Cocytus. Ace doesn’t even allow him to leave Lust alone. He’s never really left the house too much before this aside from going to the academy when he was younger.” Tony assures him.

 

“I’m shocked he even came back home at all. He’s been trying to escape for years. He used to sneak out and get himself into trouble all the time in Lust. He’s always accusing Ace of _imprisoning_ him. He hates it here.” He adds, more to himself than to Harry.

 

“How old is he?” Harry moves on from talking about his evil siblings. Compared to them, Lux is a fucking angel.

 

It seems he might be much younger than what Harry pictured him as. He almost sounds like a typical teenager that was raised by his older brother and sister.

 

Tony frowns a little as he leans, lying on his back as he looks at the ceiling at the end of the bed. It’s so funny cause Zayn makes that same expression all the time. Even with a totally different complexion at 500 pounds with a man-bun and poncho, he still doesn’t look bad. All he’s missing is eyes.

 

“Well… I’m about 102 compared to your human years so he’s way younger than me. In fact… I think Lux is probably around the same age as you guys. However old Zayn is right now, Lux is around there somewhere. He was born like right before Nars left I think. I wasn't here when he was born though. I would’ve but, Nars didn't tell me he was leaving.”

 

Harry nods. So Lux is around 17 or 18 years old. That’s… weird. Harry was way off. But he isn’t dwelling on just Lux right now. He’s dwelling on everything Tony just told him about the marsh and it’s starting to really set in that where they are right now. There’s a HUGE problem with this picture.

 

The place of “rest” isn’t just a bridge connecting hell and Earth like any normal portal. _Anything_ can come here. Even humans. And anything that comes here… can _get_ _out_ too. He’s starting to get a sense for why Zayn is trying to close the portal. It’s not even really a portal. Just an free gate that leads anyone that happens by to hell. The reason satanic groups gathered in these woods hundreds of years ago. And to this very day still.

 

After a while of Tony and Harry talking with Liam unconscious on the bed, the sound of two demons growling and fighting in the living room stops finally.

 

“So you guys know Adonis?” Harry asks from where he’s spinning around in the chair, reading a book sitting here about sea nymphs he found at the desk while Tony rummages through the wardrobe across from him, taking out clothes. A loud bang of thunder sounds outside. Harry could never get used to hearing that all the time.

 

 _“Do we know Adonis?”_ Tony repeats, laughing.

 

“Obviously everyone knows Adonis. He's famous. Just like all the other love deities. Even people on the surface know of him. He’s been coming to the underworld since he was a child. He lives here in Lust now, like a... celebrity I guess. He was friends with Nars. He really liked him and wanted to be a little more than friends but, Nars was taken already so they were just friends for centuries. I don’t know him as well as Luxie but that’s only because I look nothing like Narcissus. That’s why he likes Lux so much. Narcissus without the rejection.”

 

Harry glances at him curiously as he flips his page.

 

“Narcissus was taken like… in a relationship taken?”

 

Tony nods.

 

“More than a relationship. It was like _other-worldly_ … as he liked to put it. He didn’t talk about it that much though. It made him really sad so I never asked about it at all.”

 

Okay so the Enchiridion really was _completely wrong._

 

“I thought he rejected everyone…” Harry murmurs. Tony tilts his head as he looks at Harry.

 

“Of course he did. He had a lover he’d never been apart from that he was pretty desperate to get back to on the surface.”

 

“Wait...” Harry holds his hands like he’s calling for a time-out.

 

“He had a _lover?_ Like other than himself? _”_

 

Tony grimaces.

 

“He wasn’t really in love with himself like how it appeared in that dumb painting of him humans passed around. He hated his reflection. I mean, if I had to stare at nothing but myself all my life, I’d probably get sick of seeing myself too. Ace said he was in love with a dying star but humans can’t be with astral beings so I don’t really know how that even worked. He called her _Adara_ . But you’d probably know it best by _Epsilon Canis Majoris_.”

 

Harry heard that before in passing. It’s something is astrology but he’s not really into astrology at all. He knows Canis Majoris is a constellation though. Epsilon is a star that can store electric and light energy. Energy that streams away from stars and reaches Earth at light speed. That’s about all he knows.

 

“Honestly, I really don’t know much about her. You gotta ask Ace, he knows everything about she and Nars’ relationship. I just know after he got punished, he couldn’t see Adara anymore so he made a deal with the keeper so he could. That was the only way he could be up there again.”

 

“The keeper?” Harry repeats as his mind has gone blank from this new knowledge. Tony nods absently.

 

“Keeper of the underworld.”

 

Harry swallows. The Enchiridion wasn’t wrong. He misinterpreted it. He didn't make a deal with the devil. He made a deal with _death_. Maybe that was the same thing. He's studied enough in different religions to notice that most talk about the same general things but give them a different name.

 

The underworld. Hell. Inferno. The land of the dead. Keeper of the dead. The devil. El Diablo. _Death_. They all revolve around the same basic ideas sometimes. Tony continues to tell more about Narcissus.  

 

“The keeper thought Nars’ bold arrogance was funny. He looked death in the face as if he were immortal. Narcissus had a certain charm about him that could make anyone want to keep him around. Even death itself. Especially when he was young. Instead of sending him away, the keeper gave Nars a choice. He could be free from hell and live on the surface again but only if he left his sins here. So he kind of dedicated all his time to us so he could get back up there. He wasn’t such a bad guy like how people think. He didn’t just toss us in hell and leave, he was our friend. Even though he left kind of unexpectedly, I understand why… a few others might still have a few grudges. But there was something waiting for him up there that he hadn’t seen in a thousand years so he was understandably in a hurry. While he was here, he acted like he was happy with us but I knew he was gonna leave. Sometimes he’d just… disappear for a while. He lived in his head a lot. I can’t really explain it well but, you know him so, you know what I mean.”

 

He’s right. It really is like they’re talking about the same person here. Louis had a point about Zayn almost having a split personality sometimes. In a room full of people, he’s the headliner. Loud and provocative and generally impossible not to give all your attention to, craving for him to give it back to you. Even if he’s being an obnoxious asshole. But ever so often, when he thinks no one’s looking, his act would break and he’d go far into himself. Harry’s always noticed when he’d stop. Then in a few blinks, he’d be back to stealing your attention again. Harry’s asked Liam where Zayn disappeared to all the time. Liam didn’t know where Zayn’s mind took him to either.

 

“I think being separated from Adara left him deeply wounded even if he didn’t admit it.” Tony goes on.

 

“He’d get really depressed sometimes. Even though he had lots of friends all over the underworld, he was always lonely still. Obviously you know him… probably way better than me. I was kind of young when he left so I didn’t really know him as well as say… Ace and Morosa did cause they’re way older than me, Ava and Luxie but, he’s exactly how I remember. He just got kind of screwed over by some people on the surface after a huge… misunderstanding. Again.” Tony shrugs.

 

Harry picks his jaw off the ground as he recollects his thoughts that just multiplied by a million. He doesn’t even know what to make of all of this right now.  Of _any_ of this. Narcissus or his reflection that cursed him to hell. He needs to know the full story. All of it.

 

So death gave him an option for a free pass to see his “Adara” on the surface again. And of course, Nars took it. _Immortality_.

 

Zayn’s got the 5th type of body. An immortal one. But it’s immortality with a twist.

 

He doesn't die when he comes to the surface. He's _reborn._ Exactly the same. Well, almost exactly. He’s still the same person. But one thing to Harry is clear. He's still cursed. Not by his lust… by his vanity in his reflection. His lust was just in his reflection. Literally and figuratively, cause the marsh leads right to Lust.

 

Getting information from a demon instead of a book made Harry almost want to interview him like a journalist. Or maybe talk to the actual head of this household, Nars’ best friend Ace.

 

Zayn has to be the most interesting person on the planet right now. His was the son of a sea nymph and a river god (which makes the fact that he can’t swim quite ironic) He was friends with demons and Greek gods. He had his own luxury house in Lust. Had lovers in constellations. Who knows what else his past life might've got around to in the thousand years he lived. If he really had Zayn's exact personality then his life was the most epic party of the millennium, Niall's being a close runner up.

 

“Wow that was a really long tangent wasn’t it?” Tony laughs to himself before looking back at Harry, who's stuck deep in thought now.

 

“I’ve always had a bit of diarrhea the mouth so sorry if I’ve been boring you.”

 

Harry spins around in the chair with his book hanging loosely in his fingers, completely forgotten.

 

“Quite the _opposite_ actually…” he mumbles.

 

“To what I know you were _actually_ asking me before I completely went off the rails, no, I don’t know Adonis personally. But Luxie knows him _real_ well.”

 

Harry’s mind is now racing with too much knowledge that almost no one else knows. Like the fact that Narcissus had a _lover_ on the surface. So his rejection of sexuality didn’t mean he was too good for it. There wasn't a label that fit him. What do you call someone who is in love with a star? That’s like… against the law of physics. A human down on Earth and a star in the celestial, godly world in the heavens… they would’ve been on total opposite sides of the universe. Even Tony doesn’t know how that would’ve worked. Cause it shouldn’t. It’s impossible. But… that’s exactly what everyone said about Zayn and Liam. And what they have has never been able to be reduced to a label or understanding of outsiders either. It was always in a place outside of this world. In their own.

 

“Is Adonis his boyfriend?” Liam asks from the bed.

 

Harry looks over at him with his eyes opened from where he’s tucked under the covers before he happily jumps up onto the bed.

 

“You’re alive!” Harry cheers, getting a whole new view of Liam after hearing all this talk about why he’s able to leave his body so easily. He doesn’t look like himself at all. His skin is dull and really pale and the bite mark on his neck looks almost infected.

 

“He’s been awake for a while now.” Tony comments as he continues to pick clothes out of the closet.

 

“How do you feel?” Harry feels his forehead. Liam shakes his head.

 

“Like someone tried to eat me, turned me inside out and spit me back out.”

 

Harry laughs.

 

Liam looks at Tony then.

 

“Is he?”

 

Tony looks at him.

 

“Luxie doesn’t like the word “boyfriend”. Adonis is-”

 

 _“A dickhead.”_ Lux finishes for him as the door kicks open, so hard it almost comes off it’s hinges as he glares at Tony. Who knows how long he's been floating out there. Harry wants to know why he floats everywhere here now. Cause he’s got a body now. And he walked everywhere on Earth just fine.

 

His shirt is ripped off and his entire body is steaming as he’s surrounded in smoke, like he just managed to escape a fire that swallowed some of his clothes.

 

Liam sits up immediately as they all jump. Even Tony. 

 

“Did you kick Ava out again?” Tony groans.

 

“What the fuck kind of question is that? He brought a fucking dead body back here!”

 

“I have no idea where he got the potty mouth from. Probably too much TV.” Tony says to Liam and Harry.

 

“Did you want to give them my fucking birth certificate while you’re at it?” He asks sarcastically.

 

“Why are my clothes in your closet?” Tony accuses. Harry and Liam both snicker a little as his face steams more, flushing in embarrassment. He moves sideways, gesturing out the door.

 

“Get out of my room!”

 

Tony snatches arm fulls of clothes from the closet as he leaves, shoving Lux on his way out.

 

 _“Thieving dick,_ ” He mutters.

 

Lux doesn’t seem to notice his brother taking all his clothes or shoving him as he stares at Liam.

 

He floats over to his bed, climbing up to him.

 

“Hi.”

 

Liam swallows, still breathing shaky as he’s not fully recovered from having his soul almost sucked out of him. He looks down at Lux’s sweaty chest almost touching him if only to avoid looking into his eyes or face. The smell of his sweat mixing with the hellfire burning in him is making Liam light-headed as it snakes its way around him.  

 

He's so hot… in the sense of him feeling like an actual fireplace that is making sweat bead at Liam’s head. At least Liam knows why his skin feels like it’s got fire underneath it now.

 

“So do you want me to do that to you too or are you gonna go home?”

 

“I’m pretty sure you’ve already done that to me before.”

 

Of course he didn’t force Liam’s mouth open or rip apart his jaw or vomit truck loads of hellfire into him but, he did nearly kill him with just the little bit he gave Liam.

 

Lux shakes his head as he smiles, looking Liam over and tilting his head to the side carefully. Liam flinches when Lux lightly touches where his brother bit him. It wasn't gaping wide anymore. It's healed over with scabby bunched up skin and flaky dried blood and something that looks like black goo that may or may not be smoking a little.

 

“I'm gonna heal it so it won't hurt anymore, yeah?” he says as he examines Liam’s neck. He looks at Liam in a pause, like he's asking for permission. Liam closes his eyes but nods quickly, bracing himself for the scorch in his throat.

 

Harry gapes at them when Lux pulls Liam towards him by the shoulders and kisses him deeply. Liam doesn't push him away or anything. He just kisses him back with his hands carefully at his sides like he's trying not to touch Lux despite the fact that he's letting him stick his tongue in his mouth.

 

Both of their eyes stay open as they stare at each other while kissing and it should be the most awkward thing ever but… they make it look so intimate. Like they can see past each other’s eyes. But Lux doesn’t even have visible eyes so Harry doesn’t understand how Liam can stand staring into that void so closely.

 

His hands kind of falter for a beat, holding Lux’s shoulders lightly when a small moan slips out of him, finally closing his eyes as whatever Lux is doing to him starts to bring the colour back to his skin and his scar on his neck peels off all the scabs, healing all the way. It leaves a large scar there as a reminder. Harry can feel the heat radiating off of them from where he’s sitting at the desk all the way from the bed.

 

Lux’s eyes stay open, tilting his head sideways as he moves his fingers under Liam's shirt at his waist until he takes it off completely, holding Liam's bloody black t-shirt in his hand behind his back now.

 

Liam doesn't seem to notice him taking his shirt. But he does notice Lux’s free hand coming up behind his back as he presses into him more and pulling his head back a little with Liam’s bottom lip between his teeth as he smiles. Liam finally shoves him off roughly, making Lux laugh at his heated glare, licking over his lips teasingly and wiping the corners with his thumb. He wipes off the small trail of saliva between them and licks it off as smoke blows out of his nose, swirling around in the air around them. Liam turns his head to the side a little to cough out a little fire.

 

Harry can’t even deny how hot that actually was… the heat he’s feeling coming from them that is…....

 

“Hey,” Lux lightly slaps the side of Liam’s jaw as he frowns, bringing Liam’s face back up.

 

“Don’t chew it. Just swallow and breathe like how I told you. It won’t burn you.”

 

He floats away from the bed towards the wardrobe but all his shirts are gone.

 

“ _Fuck,”_ He groans in annoyance, slamming the closet back shut as he glides out of the room.

 

“ _Give me back my fucking CLOTHES!”_ He voice echoes through the house as he disappears down the hall.

 

“Ummm… what the fuck was that?” Harry questions Liam, yanking his shoulders towards him as he looks at his wide pupils, blinking like he’s in a daze.

 

“Hellfire.” He mutters, wiping off his mouth.

 

Harry wonders what kind of drug that is cause the look in Liam’s eyes is someone who could be high as a kite. He shakes his head in disapproval. Maybe it’s best they leave as soon as possible because nothing good can come from Liam spending another second touching and kissing an incubus that naturally look, acts and probably THINKS exactly like Zayn. Or with Zayn at all.

 

“It just heals me cause that’s what our pits or… _kakos_ or whatever are designed after, you can stop gawking.”

 

“Well that better be all it is Liam Payne, do you hear me?” Harry hisses at him like a parent.

 

“That’s a _demon_ least we forget!”

 

Liam rolls his eyes.

 

“I know what he is Harry. Obviously.”

 

Harry isn’t sure how much of that Liam heard, if he heard Tony explaining exactly what Lux is at all.

 

“How can you even stand to kiss him like that? He smells like burning flesh that doesn’t make you gag?” Harry grimaces. Liam doesn’t actually think it smells bad.

 

“I don’t care what he smells like, that is the most irrelevant thing you can possibly be concerned with right now.”

 

Liam shakes his head at him.

 

“What the hell is with all of you? I feel like I’m the only person here that isn’t throwing myself off a cliff at the first sign of adversity. No one has to DIE. We’ve literally been to the centre of everything already. We didn’t get sent there for nothing and Charon agreed that it was a good idea to go there and Z won’t even consider it. He’s fucking immortal! What’s the worst that can happen? Not that much would change. It’s not like we're going back in time and killing Hitler.” Liam grumbles as he crosses his arms. Harry sighs deeply.

 

“Well sorry I’m not the happy-go-lucky hipster you need me to be right now but I’m not throwing myself off any cliff or into any more portals. Cause the worst that can happen is we fuck up the space time continuum and wipe out our entire existence! Apparently, there’s way more shit going on than what we could’ve possibly known that two teenaged boys probably shouldn’t try to intervene. Cause we’ll fucking die.” Harry stands up.

 

“I’m going back up there to find my brother and make sure he’s not paralyzed with SHOCK after watching us drown in a bottomless pit and sending him to London before he’s eaten for throwing grey goose bottles at Luxuria’s fucking face. Then I’m going to give Anthony and Ben enough money for them to honeymoon in Cancun and we’ll probably visit Joey and Cher in the hospital before they leave. THEN I’m going home and planning my own getaway out of this town cause there’s nothing staying here, waiting for more of Zayn’s demons to try to kill us is going to help. And Liam,”

 

Harry kneels on the side of the bed.

 

“You should come with me.”

 

“Are you joking?”

 

“Why would I joke about this?”

 

“I can’t leave him like this!”

 

“Well Louis told me some pretty fucked up shit about Zayn that should change your mind.”

 

Liam squints at him.

 

“Since when do we go around listening to anything Louis fucking Tomlinson has to say?”

 

“Since some of it actually should be taken into consideration!”

 

“Like what? The fact that you hooked up with Zayn and felt the need to lie to me about it for some reason?” Liam raises his voice, making Harry wince a little as he closes his eyes.

 

“Or the fact that he called Zayn a whore? Or a heartless, self-hating narcissist that’s “fucked up in the head”. Is that supposed to be valuable information I should consider? Because that’s not the first time he’s bad-mouthed Zayn behind his back and I’m not the blind IDIOT all of you take me for! I know who Zayn is. He doesn’t have a split personality. Louis doesn’t know shit about Zayn cause obviously he has bigger issues than even he knew about his own self, finding out he’s CURSED and all. I know he’s an asshole sometimes. But I also know that’s not who he actually is and you should know that too. That’s not even a fraction of who he is and even if he’s really fucked up right now, that doesn’t mean I’m gonna leave him to continue this infinity loop of waking up in hell every time he turns 17! Whatever happened between him and WHOEVER is between them. He’s got his fucked up past and his demons just like everyone else. Maybe not _literally_ but-”

 

“Liam that’s not what I’m talking about.” Harry stops him as he sighs.

 

“I know Zayn’s not really like that. Yeah he can be a moody asshole but he’s not heartless. I know him Liam. He’s my friend and so are you. I love both of you cause you’re my fucking family... and I know that’s weird cause I did weird stuff with Zayn when we were STONED but that much is true and I didn’t tell you cause I didn’t want you or anyone else to get the wrong idea and think that happens all the time cause it DOESN’T.” Harry rushes out the last part quickly before taking another deep breath.

 

“But I know he’s not a narcissist. The _opposite_ actually. The Zayn you and I know cares about the world way more than he lets on. He adores you more than anyone Liam. He’s looked at you like you were the actual sunrise since before we could even count and he tattooed it across the veins when he was 12 just so he could remind everyone of it. He fucking _worships_ you.”

 

Liam pulls his knees up to his chest, sinking his forehead against it.

 

“Whatever happened with him and all those people, only he knows. But he cares about your life more than his own, which is how I know the whole shit about vanity got screwed up. He didn’t spend all that time staring at himself because he _wanted_ to. He was _forced_ to. He wanted to look at his star in the sky or someone he thought was equivalent of that, that lived on the surface. And to give you a hint, that someone was probably _you_ cause it’s always you _._ And I know that’s why he doesn’t care if he dies in hell as long as you’re safe which is like… tragically romantic in the fucked up Jack and Rose _titanic_ kind of way. But whatever romance is romance. The more tragic, the better.”

 

Liam feels like there’s a huge _but_ coming. Whether it’s a Taylor Swift size one or Nicki Minaj sized one is the question. Harry’s never said something against the notion of Liam and Zayn being a pair so he’s thinking Nicki Minaj sized.

 

“But what Louis said about Narcissus is true. That IS Zayn. Those are his demons out there and this is his house underneath his marsh. All of this is Zayn. And it’s way more danger here than I originally thought if that’s even fucking possible.”

 

Harry pauses to shake out his curls a little, a nervous habit of his that tells Liam he definitely doesn’t like where this is going.

 

“Zayn’s demons escape through that hole out there all the time. This house is like a porous drain anyone can pass through if they have a body. His demons have gone to the surface and they’ve _killed people_ . Lots of people. And I know he knows that. I’m not saying it’s his fault at all so don’t get up in arms about it but… I think the marsh is why all this is happening. It’s what attracts wicked occults to Manningtree to sacrifice kids and I think it’s what’s kept Zayn’s curse alive. Getting rid of his demons wasn’t to break the curse. That was a deal he made with _death_ so he could live on the surface again. But getting rid of his demons has had negative consequences by adding evil to the entire planet and I know he must've regretted that deal. The _marsh_ still holds his curse but he got rid of his lust with LUX so he isn’t stuck reflecting in the water anymore. Cause Lux stayed _here_ and now they’re stuck together again _._ So maybe he really is destined to come back to his marsh every time he’s 17, who knows, but I do know this,”

 

Harry looks out the door briefly to make sure no one is nearby before he leans close and lowers his voice.

 

“He’s closing the portal in the marsh on the full moon. I’m like 1,000 percent positive that Nars tried to before he got to the surface but he drowned and that’s probably why he left without saying goodbye. He fucking died. 9 months later, Zayn was born.”

 

Liam frowns.

 

“Why would Zayn close the portal? He’d never be able to come back...”

 

Harry brows knit as he shakes his head at Liam.

 

“That’s the point! If he closes it, nothing can get out anymore. He’s not thinking about what’s gonna happen to him. We’ve just discovered there’s a wide open gate to HELL sitting out in the open for anything to fall into and anything to _crawl out of and make human sacrifices into._ There are much bigger things right now than you and Zayn’s relationship and I know he knows that. SEVERAL BIG THINGS and 1,000 years worth of damage to the planet. We know he isn’t narcissistic, he’s altruistic. Even if he doesn’t admit it. Witches have come to this marsh for centuries to make sacrifices into it and because of that, demons have been wreaking havoc on the surface with all the free bodies that have been thrown into this house. It’s like breaking a mass murderer out of prison and giving them a car to get around in. The bodies being the car. Zayn isn’t just sacrificing himself for you. He’s doing it for all the innocent lives that are at stake right now. Like the 200 people that are about to be cooked at that dance if someone doesn’t close the portal on the full moon. Their Inferno sacrifice won’t work if there’s no inferno anymore. That’s why we have to leave here. After he closes it, he’ll have to go deeper into hell to find another way out. That’s what he’s been doing for the last 3 days… or months, time is really warped down here. He’s the only one that can close that hole out there cause _his curse opened it_. That’s how I know he’s not a narcissist. He’s doing this for everyone. After he breaks the curse himself and purges Lux again, he’ll still be immortal. Cause a deal with Death lasts forever.”

 

A dial tone echoes in Liam’s head as he thinks about why Zayn wouldn’t tell him what he was doing that his “past” never finished. He never broke his curse. He’s never been very good at goodbyes. Liam’s not saying goodbye. Not in this lifetime.

 

His eyes refocus past Harry’s head when he sees Lux leaning against the door, looking down at a clean towel and a batman t-shirt he has in his hand that looks suspiciously identical to a shirt Liam lost a few years ago.

 

He comes in finally after probably listening for who even knows how long, giving it to Liam. When Liam reaches for it, he pulls it back at the last second before he can take it, throwing it on his face. Liam snatches it off as he glares at Lux’s grinning face.

 

Watching them together now is like watching a silent film. The next moments are really quiet aside from the thunder rumbling in the distance outside.

 

Lux sits in front of Liam, crossing his legs like a pretzel as he hovers above the bed with his arms leaning back behind him, hunched in his shoulders. He unabashedly watches Liam with his lip between his teeth as Liam wipes off his bloody neck and bare chest before putting his shirt on, bobbing a little like he's sitting on a body invisible water. Liam ignores Lux’s leering.

 

It’s like he repels touching any surface no matter what he's doing. Harry wonders if that's just a peculiar demon thing to not touch the ground in hell but then again, the other two were walking around normally. Maybe it’s just a Lux thing.

 

He feels like he knows entirely too much about Lux now. He’s lost his facade of being a scary, thousand year old demon. Now… he looks like a trouble-making teenaged dude with a bad temper and a crude sense of humour who watches fantasy movies and never left the house unless he was sneaking out cause his older brother didn't let him, who’s now been dragged into something he didn’t even ask to be in, like them. Just like Zayn.

 

“How exactly do we get out of here?” Harry finally asks as the silence is making him uncomfortable. Zayn and Liam sat in silence all the time and Harry can’t stand it. There’s too much shit hanging in the air, like the elephant just crashed through the ceiling, for them not to be talking.

 

Lux jams a thumb behind him.

 

“Through the marsh. But you’ll drown if you try to swim through the it so Lima has to go first. Move the water out of the way like earlier after you get to the surface again.”

 

Liam freezes for a few seconds before looks back up at Lux slowly.

 

“You saw us-”

 

Lux nods before he even finishes the question. So it really was him the entire time and he did see them watching.

 

Liam stands up, holding his throbbing head.

 

“You… are such a-”

 

“Demon? Yeah I’m aware.”

 

Liam looks back at him in disbelief.

 

“Why would you do that to me? I almost lost control of myself!”

 

“I figured if you saw I was busy, you’d go away.” He shrugs, turning on his back as he floats leisurely, swaying back and forth like he’s on a hammock as he looks at the ceiling with his hands behind his head.

 

“And I was horny anyways. Louis’ voice is irritating as fuck and the only way to get him to shut up is to stuff his mouth. So maybe the next time he says nonsensical bullshit like that to you again, you make him eat it instead of taking it.”

 

“I’m not really into the whole violence thing…” Harry throws out there.

 

“Your suicide attempt in Anthony’s car begs to differ.” Lux tiffs.

 

Liam narrows his eyes at him as he shakes his head.

 

“So, what? You’re gonna make us leave?”

 

Lux looks over at him as his head dangles.

 

“I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do babe. If Harold wants to drag you out, I’m not gonna stop him, although I do encourage it.” He says with a wink directed at Harry. He hasn’t heard Zayn call him that in years.

 

Liam looks away from him as he turns around, closing his eyes as he thinks about what is waiting for him on the surface. Going to court and more therapy and re-living the nightmare of seeing his sperm donor again. There’s no way he can go back there.

 

“I know what Zayn’s doing.” Harry says as he stands up.

 

Lux rolls his eyes.

 

“Louis’ got a big mouth but he’s such a liar… I wouldn’t trust what he says. You can trust me though. I never lie.” he smiles innocently. Liam can hear his heart stutter. So he’s basically saying he is a liar.

 

“Don't worry. Zayn’s never gonna die.”

 

Liam smooths back his hair, realigning his wits as he collects himself calmly. Freaking out and arguing with each other was pointless and a total waste of their time right now. There’s so much information that’s been spilled out sloppily on the floor in front of them all and… he’s done running around in circles.

 

"Can I talk to you alone?"

 

He says it to Lux. Just Lux.  
  
  
It doesn’t phase him, continuing to float on his back casually as he nods once with his eyes closed. He even takes a cigarette out of his sweats, lighting it with a snap of two fingers and blowing rings into the air. When Liam looks at Harry he shakes his head with his mouth flatten out, leaving them alone in the room with one last warning look shot at Liam that he rolls his eyes at.

 

Liam sits in front of Lux on the bed, crossing his legs neatly.

 

“What do you wanna talk about? I’m all ears.” He says with his cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth, scratching the black heart tattooed on Zayn’s hip.

 

Liam fans the smoke out of his face, wondering if he’s smoking again because of what Harry said about the way he smells. It’s masked heavily when he smokes and he did tell Liam it was so he wouldn’t smell him burning. Liam decides he shouldn’t care but… it’s kind of impossible now that he virtually knows everything about Lux except for his full name. Even what he probably looks like.

 

The first time he told Liam to call him Lux, a weird barrier of intimacy had been crossed. And then he seen his eyes and another one had been crossed. Now… there was no barrier aside from Zayn’s body.

  
  
"Can Z hear me?"  
  
  
Lux looks at Liam as he smiles.  
  
  
"Are we playing that fun little game again?" He chirps.  
  
  
Liam doesn’t hesitate to nod. Lux likes games, Liam could work with that.

 

Lux sits up straight, mimicking his pose, only he's still floating.  
  
  
"No." He answers Liam’s first question.  
  
  
"Can he see me?"  
  
  
Lux shakes his head again.  
  
  
"Has he ever seen me?"  
  
  
"Isn't it my turn?"  
  
  
"You don't get a turn." Liam isn’t letting him dance around a direct answer now.  
  
  
Lux narrows his eyes at Liam as his body lowers a little so it looks like he’s touching the bed, but he still bobs a just a tad.  
  
  
"Yes." He answers instead of arguing. The murmur in his chest stutters.  
  
  
"Don't lie."  
  
  
Lux rolls his eyes.  
  
  
"Of course he's "seen" you. He isn't blind."  
  
  
"But he's cursed right?"  
  
  
Lux shrugs.  
  
  
"To a certain degree.”

 

“To what degree?”

 

“The degree that he isn’t a stuck reflecting in a marsh anymore.” Lux smiles.

 

“Getting rid of his lust by leaving it in a reflection was pretty clever. He’s very smart isn’t he? Except he wasn’t smart enough to break his curse. _Vanity._ He will never separate from such a heinous affliction.”

 

Did Lux just insult himself? At least he’s being honest now.

 

“Whether you want to call that a fixation with his reflection or his emptiness… it’s the same thing. He might not lust after himself quite so literally without me but he’ll always live forever in vain. Pointlessly. Infinitely. Empty. Forever. So maybe when he looks at you, he can't help looking for himself in your eyes. His empty soul will always looks for itself. Even if he doesn’t want to see it."

 

Liam looks down at his lap, wondering why Zayn has never said anything about feeling like that. Well… he did. But not entirely. He made it sound sort of really sweet in a kind of twisted way. Liam supposes it might be the same for why he’s never told Zayn about his own internal issues. Everyone has their demons. Zayn’s just seem to consume his life in a more literal way. But then… so do Liam’s. Zayn demons and his own twist into each other cause as long as Zayn is suffering, so is Liam.

 

“So he's never actually seen what I look like?”

 

Lux tilts his head sideways as he looks at Liam, leaning closer slowly as he floats.

 

“Depends… you wore glasses before.”

 

“So?”

 

“So you’ve never seen what you really looked like either.”

 

If that’s Lux’s way of skating around saying no then Liam shouldn’t even ask him anything. He’ll never give him a direct answer to anything and neither will Zayn. He wouldn’t even tell Liam why he was really staying here. He thinks he’s protecting Liam by breaking up with him (after being official for a good 5 seconds) and sending him back home but… he’s only hurting himself. Literally killing himself. Which is hurting Liam too.

 

“Of course he’s never seen me.”

 

He can’t see that Liam is tearing apart. No one’s ever looked at Liam. Not even his own dad.

 

Even if his relationship with his dad was normal, even if Zayn wasn’t cursed, Liam doesn’t think either of them would’ve ever seen him. He’s always the person who gets overlooked. That person at the back of the class that everyone knows is there but no one really looks at or acknowledges, that’s Liam. Maybe you’ve been overlooked yourself a few times. In the background of someone else’s picture or a yearbook photo. That was Liam’s entire life. He was born blind to everyone else too. If he was on the outside, he wouldn’t have wanted to look at himself either.

 

“Liam, I’m not saying he’s never seen you. You just look really different with glasses.” Lux says seriously bringing out of his bad thoughts.

 

“There’s nothing wrong with that… Zayn has always been able to see you. If I can see you, then so can he. And I like what I see so that means he does too, obviously. You already fucking know that.” He doesn’t say that in a joking or flirtatious way.

 

Liam’s face still burns anyways as it makes him feel less bad about his old appearance.

 

“Then why doesn’t he look me in the eye?”

 

“Not looking you in the eye isn’t an aversion to you. He just doesn’t like looking at himself. He’d rather look at you than me but… he can’t help seeing himself in your eyes.”

 

He tilts Liam's head up without touching him, that sense with his eyes that reaches out and brings Liam’s chin up to look at him as he stares into his eyes, Liam’s pupil dilating with Lux’s.

 

 _“But he likes the way you look at him.”_  
  
  
His voice dips into that suggestive tone now, caressing Liam's ears, slowly cancelling out all his unpleasant thoughts altogether now, replacing it with luxurious delirium.

 

  
_"Whether you're looking at his nose… or his lips… or his eyes..."_

  
Liam's breath actually stops when his voice touches inside him, sliding in his mouth and making him salivate, feeling a familiar rubbing against the walls of his throat, down to the very bottom.  
  
  
_"Or when you’re watching him as you suck him,"_  
  
  
Liam almost feels like he's doing it right now as all sense of anything outside of Lux's voice is lost. Zayn's voice, making him want to suck him right now, lapping Liam up like a drug.  
  
  
Lux is right at his ear now as his voice continues to massage Liam's senses, still not having touched him physically once as his burning scent fogs up Liam's mind even more.  
  
  
_"You can suck it all you want when you go back home,"_ he whispers.  
  
  
_"Okay… OH okay-"_ Liam gasps as a ghost orgasm springs him forward a bit, just from the sound of his voice alone.  
  
  
It's the type of orgasm that has an instant encore, restarting again and it feels like it never ends. His head falls against Lux's shoulder, squeezing his eyes closed hard and holding onto him for support as his body shakes, grunting with his mouth hung open.

 

“ _OkaY,”_

 

He doesn't care hold loud he's being. He needs to release some kind of way.  
  
  
Lux holds under Liam's shoulder so he doesn’t fall off the bed and hurt himself, looking around the room briefly as Liam spazzes against him. Outside the door, he makes eye contact with Harry, watching them with his mouth hung open in offence. Lux rolls his eyes, looking down at Liam again as he finally comes down to his loose-limbed body falling against Lux like he’s been struck by paralysis.  
  
  
He blinks sleepy eyes over Lux’s shoulder, dazed.  
  
  
_"What did you-"_ _  
_

  
Lux shushes him, pulling him up by his waist.  
  
  
"After all that, I'd say you look pretty tired." He smiles.  
  
  
Liam shakes his head slowly.  
  
  
"It's okay." Lux drags him forward a bit, pulling back the sheets and tucking Liam in.  
  
  
"You get some rest and then you'll go home like how you said, yeah?"  
  
  
Liam nods sleepily, unsure of what he's even nodding for. He feels like he's actually been drugged. Having orgasms like that should be illegal. He just busted like 8 times in a row, untouched and now he's feeling like he's about to fall into a damn good coma.

 

He's not supposed to want to go is he? But the option to leave seems so much more attractive now.

  
  
_"Okay."_ He sighs dopily as his eyes close, instantly thrown into a dream.

 

 _“Love you,”_ Lux whispers as he floats out of the room with his hands in his pockets, leaving Liam to sleep as he closes the door behind him.

 

He nods his head back against the door on the other side, closing his eyes with his head tilted up in a heavy sigh.  
  
  
"I thought you couldn't control his mind?" Harry asks in front of him.  
  
  
"Can't." Lux shakes his head a little.  
  
  
"I literally just watched you change his mind."  
  
  
"You just watched me seduce him." Lux corrects as he opens his eyes again before he smirks.  
  
  
"Sort of like how I did with you."  
  
  
Harry refuses to blush or squirm.  
  
  
"So he's leaving right?" He says instead of responding to that.  
  
  
Lux sits up again, floating to the coach before plopping down on it.  
  
  
"Probably." Lux says airily.

 

“What’s that mean?”  
  
  
Harry sits on the couch too, shoving Lux's bare feet away so he can sit. He freezes up immediately, instantly paralyzed with fear after he realises what he just did, forgetting this isn't Zayn and he isn't supposed to do stuff like that to him.

 

He hops back up.

 

“I'm sorry! I-”

 

“It's okay!” Lux sits up quickly as he laughs at Harry's panic, putting his hands up innocently so Harry will calm down.

 

“Jesus fucking Christ, am I really that scary?”

 

_Umm… yes?_

 

Harry doesn't say that outloud. Even if Lux is a teenager and even if he's not as bloodthirsty as his siblings, he's still murdered innocent people and he'd still lash out at any moment and do the same thing to Harry if he wanted to. Like he almost did last time. Three times actually. But the first time at lunch was Zayn but… whatever. They both have a terrifying short temper. Ever since he threatened Harry and choked him, when he’s near him now, his whole vibe makes Harry’s stomach curdle like sour milk. It’s probably just psychological though, cause there’s a conflict there. Harry doesn’t know if that morality would mean that Zayn is no better than Lux. Cause that would mean Zayn has murdered innocent people too.

 

Harry drops the entire train of thought as he sits down on the couch anyways, far away from Lux.  

 

Lux stares at him blankly before he scoots all the down to the very opposite end like Harry did, exaggeratedly. There's mountains of space between them now.

 

“Better?” Lux smiles sarcastically. Louis was right. He acts just like Zayn.

 

He rolls his eyes at Harry as he looks away from him, looking at the mess all over the place with a grimace.

 

As they sit, parts of the TV start to levitate as the material breaks all the way down into dust, sweeping together into neat little piles. Harry watches the little particles move on their own in fascination, swirling around like water on the ground.

 

The car does the same, breaking down bit by bit, disintegrating and sweeping into piles as the room starts to seemingly get rid of everything out of place by itself. Lux stands up, gliding towards the piles of dust with his hands raised in front of him, moving them through the air half-heartedly like a composer during a symphony, making the dust swish around across the floor, some floating in the air and out of the room. Harry realises Lux is cleaning up all the mess.

 

As he looks around, he notices something else out of place. The walls that were destroyed… they’re all perfectly intact again.

 

“What happened to the… walls?”

 

“The walls get fixed tomorrow so you can’t see the mess now.” Lux says. Harry squints in confusion.

 

“What?”

 

“The underworld exists on an etheric plane.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Tony already told him that. That why time appears to not be lining up with him. It’s moving really slow. He’s read about etheric planes but it was just incredible to actually experience for himself. No wonder he isn’t suffocating down here. He’s going to eventually. Just not yet. Cause time moves so slow here that his body hasn’t caught up to the fact that he’s not physically breathing yet. It moves so slow, the walls haven’t even caught up to the fact that they’ve been physically demolished yet.

 

Etheric planes are one of those places where things like time, space and objects can all exist on common ground but not in consistent states. The object exists in a solid state while time and space exist in liquid states. It creates a paradox.

 

For example, a bowling ball could exist in a solid state here but the time and space around it exists like a liquid, letting the ball move through it like normal. If Harry picks the ball up, and rolls it across the room, he will see it move through the space. Eventually. For now, he’ll find the ball still sitting in front of him when he looks down again. Cause the solid object and liquid space and time aren’t consistent with each other. The ball is moving because it still has to act as a physical, solid object but time and space aren’t. Time and space wouldn’t have caught up with the ball yet that it’s moving now. So even if it looks like it’s moving after Harry rolls it, it’s not. And even if it looks like it’s not moving, it is. It’s moving as a solid object but not yet moving in liquid space or time. The inconsistency of the liquid and solid together create the paradox.

 

Like Harry right now in a solid state, stationary. He exists here on this plane physically. Then things like time and space right now, behave in a liquid state, stretching out thinly. These exist non-physically.

 

When things can all exist on one plane in different states like this, the surroundings become inconsistent with each other. Like how the walls got destroyed right before his eyes but as he looks into the room again now, it’s still intact. Physically, the wall is destroyed but since time isn’t consistent with physical objects, the walls probably won’t crumble until tomorrow. Or maybe a year from now. Time is in slow motion, acting as a liquid around it here.

 

So while it feels like he’s been here for a few hours, it’s probably only been a few milliseconds in actuality. The walls got destroyed in the blink of an eye. So they won’t actually appear to be destroyed until “tomorrow” - which means anytime in the future that isn’t right now. Tomorrow could be in 2117. And since the future technically doesn’t exist since it hasn’t happened yet, the walls might never crumble. And there is paradox of an etheric plane. It’s impossible to know if they’ll actually ever see the wall crumble. They know it’s going to, eventually, but the question of when is up in the air.

 

Harry can go without air for about a minute in a half in actuality. That might be 10 hours down here. Or 10 years. Time isn’t consistent with him. All Harry knows is, he’s gonna run out of breath eventually… just not now, which means never. A paradox is a paradox.

 

One day on the surface might feel like a month or 2 down here. Or a thousand years. Or forever. This is why when you go to hell it feels like forever. Even if it’s not. Harry doesn’t want to be on this plane in hell. Zayn’s was right, if they stay, they’ll never leave.

 

Now he watches Lux sweep the floor, sitting in awkward silence and wishing Liam would get up already so they can go home.

 

“He’s not getting up for a few hours if that's what you're waiting for.” Lux says as he continues cleaning every little piece of dust in every corner of the room, collecting them in piles and sweeping them away.

 

Even all the dirt and mud the car brought gets swept away, dirt off the bottom of Harry's converses, peeling right off and floating over to Lux, collecting around him before getting swept away. He doesn’t like how inconsistent things move with each other here. He feels like he’s inside a warped fun house mirror.

 

It looks like a miniature dust storm in here now though and it's kind of cool to watch.

 

“Have you got OCD or something?” Harry asks when pieces of mud that’s got on his skin and hair peel off ticklishly.

 

Lux ignores Harry now, fixing the paintings on the walls so they're straightened, dust off the walls joining the party on the ground under Lux’s dangling, clean, bare feet. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t touch the ground here. The house is made out of sandy rocks. If he walked, his feet would be dirty all the time. He seems like a germaphobe.

 

He’s even more of a neat freak than Zayn. He’s obsessed with hygiene. His room looks like the inside of a colourful hospital room, like a rainbow threw up all over it after he organised it.

 

Louis walks by the hallway, pausing when he sees Harry in the living room.

 

“You're still here?” he pokes his head into the room, looking around at Lux.

 

“Don't worry, we’ll be leaving you in hell alone soon.” Harry smiles.

 

“Yeah where I'll be getting laid with sex gods and you're… doing what exactly?” Louis retorts curiously.

 

 _“Louis,”_ Lux stops, looking at Louis with daggers. Louis puts his hands up in resignation.

 

“He started it.” he murmurs as he leaves again.

 

Lux rolls his eyes, continuing to pick up every little piece of trash around him until it’s spotless again, all the mess breaking down and sweeping somewhere Harry will never know.

 

  
"So you can make anyone do what you suggest just by talking to them?" Harry tries to make casual conversation. He doesn’t like sitting in silence like Liam and Zayn. Music or any kind of sound other than their own breathing and thunder outside right now would ease his mind.

 

“Sometimes.” Lux shrugs as he meticulously straightens every picture on the wall perfectly.

 

“Suggestion only reveals to the person something they don’t realise they want. Persuasion pushes them towards it. Seduction makes their choice feel good.”

 

“What about compulsion?” Harry adds for him since he conveniently leaves that one out.

 

“I can’t control anyone’s mind.”

 

Harry doesn’t believe him. Cause he’s a thought that sprang directly from Zayn’s mind. Power over the mind is probably his greatest power over the power of reflecting and the power of lust. And demons lie all the time. In fact, Zayn does the exact same thing. Downplaying what he’s truly capable of or feeling to appear to be someone else he’s not.

 

“But… if I did, it would depend entirely on how strong their will is.” Lux adds hypothetically.

 

“So Liam is weak-willed.”

 

Lux turns on Harry.

 

“I’ve never fucking COERCED him into doing **anything**!” His amped voice multiplies briefly, making Harry shy into himself.

 

He decides to stop accusing him of controlling Liam’s mind then. Even if he still believes it. It’s just easy to forget he’s a demon but he’ll never look innocent to Harry. Lux rolls his eyes in annoyance turns back around, going back to cleaning as he talks normally again.

 

“Liam is the complete opposite of weak-willed. If a demon came to him and tried to get him to bare his soul freely, they’d find a brick wall in front of him. He just gets a little lost outside of himself. I dunno why you think he’s so simple-minded. He’s even convinced himself of being inadequate. He sees himself and the wall keeping him in his body breaks down completely. He’s very strong but he just needs guidance. His body might be soft but the person inside isn’t. There’s much more to him than he thinks. He’s just got an Achilles heel like everyone else does. Even you Harold.”

 

Harry smiles a little. Zayn used to call him that when they were kids.

 

“And what’s my “Achilles heel”?”

 

_“Your dirty little phallic mind that divides your focus from survival.”_

 

Harry jumps when Lux appears next to him on the couch without him even noticing him coming over, that silky sense of an outside pleasure crawling down his spine again like it did in the hallway 3 or so days ago. Harry’s hand grips the arm of the couch beside him as he whimpers, arching his back with his head towards the ceiling as his body is massaged by the invisible hands of a sex demon from the inside out, realigning his vertebrate.

 

“ _Jesus, Mary and_ … _Joseph,”_ His hips spring a little when it moves down to his crotch and pulls waves of pure ecstasy out of his soul, balling up his fist and hitting the arm of the couch as his eyes squeeze. It’s like getting a soul-sucking blowjob without anyone actually giving him a blowjob.

 

 _“The lust you secretly feel for Zayn clouds your brain and renders you impotent, at the mercy of me and anyone else who might want you for himself,”_ His voice milk's Harry dry, curling his toes as his gut clenches. He can feel Lux at his ear.

 

 _“Whether it’s to fuck you,”_ Lux’s hand comes up Harry’s slow-heaving chest as his breath catches before wrapping around his neck.

 

_“Or KILL you,”_

 

Just before he busts, all of it stops at once and it leaves Harry feeling the aftermath of titillation to an almost painful degree. He heaves all the air out of his lungs as his body releases, looking down at his boner with an irritated grimace. He looks back up at Lux, going back to collecting dust and straightening furniture.

 

“They teach you how to fuck with people like that in demon academy?” he says, disgruntled as he adjusts himself.

 

“I flunked.” Lux shrugs simply, which almost makes Harry laugh.

 

After a beat of Harry thinking about his nan taking a dump so this problem Lux thought would be funny to spring out of him goes away.

 

“What about Liam?” Harry finally asks after he succeeds.

 

“What about him?”

 

“What’s his Achilles heel?”

 

Lux looks back at him.

 

“I look like someone he loves.”

 

Harry’s brow rise. Of course. Zayn is his weakness.

 

It never occurred to him that Lux has been using the fact that he looks like Zayn against Liam to make him do whatever he wants. Lux actually… used it for something good. Maybe he’s not as horrible as he wants Harry to think he is. The room is totally cleaned up now, not a hair out of place. Lux turns to Harry then.

 

“Now I’m gonna need you to to give me a detailed reasoning, typed in MLA format for why I shouldn’t go to the surface and roast Mikey alive where he’s standing right now for blinding me for a good 8 fucking hours 2 years ago.”

 

Harry swallows dried up, non-existent air in his throat. This horrible day in hell was about to get even longer.

 

*

 

Liam might be called the dreamer but he almost never remembers what his dreams consist of at night after he wakes up. He was a born daydreamer.

 

At night, they were always foggy and full of dust, like he was blind even in his sleep. But maybe 2 or 3 times a month, the dust will clear and his dream will become lucid. Sometimes his mind takes him outside of his body, other times it takes him inside of his memory. But he always has the freedom to do whatever he wants here.

 

When the dreamer becomes aware of the dream, they given loose, free body and able to do as they please with it.

 

So when Liam looks around him and finds himself sitting on a bench in his jersey and shorts watching Tom kicking a football up the field with his teammates and he hears the people in the bleachers shouting and cheering and the full moon sitting above them in the night sky, he becomes aware of his dream thrown back into his memory.

 

“Admit it,” Niall’s voice chirps next to him on the bench.

 

Liam looks over at him with wide eyes through the blurry lenses of his old glasses. He wakes up in his sleep like this all the time so he knows this isn’t real and that he’s still asleep. But after the insanity he’s seen lately… you never know what’s real anymore.

 

“You love him.” Niall teases him.

 

Liam blinks, looking ahead again at the ongoing football match. He takes off his useless, glasses and rubs his eyes as he tries to remember what day it is.

 

“Come on Payno, seriously. Explain to me what kind of “best friends” get matching tattoos?” Niall picks up his wrist and dangles it in his face.

 

Liam’s head springs up suddenly, as the events of what happened at this particular game occurs to him again, looking over at the student section of the bleachers where Zayn was sitting before. And there he is, squatting on his toes with the cheerleaders in his uniform shorts with his pink and black striped t-shirt, shaggy hair pulled back with a headband as he watches the match with a bored expression. He never liked sports. Liam never understood why he even came to every game… until now.

 

It’s the night of the fire. Liam is fully aware that he’s dreaming right now but… it’s so vivid. He can’t remember if it’s always felt this real. Cause Zayn is right there and he’s fully human and Liam’s got half a mind of just run over there right now and get away from all this. Cause maybe living in a dream could turn into reality and they’d get away from here safely if they left right now.

 

“Liam?” Niall tries to get his attention but Liam’s just staring at Zayn. And Tyler behind him, leaning over the fence as he tries to get Zayn’s attention.

 

Zayn ignores him for a moment and Liam can see his jaw pulsing in irritation all the way from the bleachers. He’s still got enhanced demon senses. And Zayn’s expression looks like he’s out to kill someone right now the longer Tyler calls behind him.

 

"Oi, faggot!" Tyler calls again.

Next to him, Jade leans over his lap.

 

“Promise me you won’t walk over there.” She whispers.

 

“If I walk over there, I will _blind him.”_ Zayn says through clenched teeth.

 

“Don’t get into a fight Zaynie, if you get arrested you can’t see Lima tonight.”

 

Zayn snorts, glancing over at Liam and his heart flutters when he looks at him and smiles. Liam waves at him slowly, hesitantly. Zayn doesn’t return it, looking back at the game instead, chewing on his lip nervously.

 

“Yeah I’m dying tonight.” He murmurs. Jade laughs, patting his bouncing knee.

 

“Why are you such a drama queen?” She lays her head down sideways on his leg.

 

“Well, all this hyped up jitteriness needs to go _somewhere_ ,” He hisses. His forehead is so wrinkled and stressed out. Liam can’t believe how blind he really was before.

 

“It’s either be a queen or a mass murderer.”

 

“Faggot!” Tyler yells at him again. Zayn shakes his head with a clenched jaw.

 

“My second life-style choice is looking real fucking obtainable right now.”

 

“Z, don’t!” Jade stops him from standing up as she frowns.

 

“Don’t even look at him. If you do, you’ll be stuck.”

 

Liam gets goosebumps all over his skin. Did Zayn tell Jade about the curse? But… they didn’t know about this back then. Unless… Zayn known something about this more than he’s ever let on to Liam. He supposes Zayn would’ve figured it out a long time ago that something was wrong if everytime he looks at himself, he got the feeling that he was being forced to keep looking.

 

Zayn runs his hands through his hair as he looks at the ground.

 

“I’m fucking sober and I feel like I’m gonna be sick all over my fucking self.”

 

“I can tell Pez to bring a joint if you think that’ll ease the anxiety?” She offers but Zayn shakes his head.

 

“Doesn’t matter. He’s never gonna talk to me again-”

 

“Oh shut up you silly little boy,” Jade shakes her head with a smile.

 

“He would never reject you.”

 

 

“You’re right, he’ll be too busy killing over in shock. I’m gonna kill him.”

 

Liam laughs loudly at the bench, making Niall look at him like he’s crazy, which makes him laugh even more.

 

“Are you alright?” Niall asks cautiously. Liam nods with a wide smile.

 

Maybe he should go over there now. This is a dream afterall. He can do anything he wants.

 

“MALIK!” Tyler yells and unexpectedly Zayn springs to his feet, so fast Jade actually falls on the ground.

 

Zayn leans over the fence, getting in Tyler’s face.

 

“Hi.” Zayn gives him a fake white smile. Liam can hear everything they said now.

 

“What the fuck do you want?”

 

Tyler isn’t phased by his sharp attitude.

 

  
"I've been yelling your name for hours!" Tyler complains. Zayn drums his fingers against the fence.

 

“Is my fucking name faggot?"

  
Tyler smiles.

  
"You answered didn’t you?"

 

"What?" Zayn yells as he squints. Tyler leans closer and yells it again.

 

"I'm sorry I can't hear you." Zayn acts like he's deaf which makes Tyler laugh.

 

"Come ‘ere."

 

Zayn scoffs, winding his finger into Tyler's hair.

 

"Where'd these wild curls come from? You look like a knob."

 

This scene is way different than what Liam thought it was now that he can hear and see everything clearly. Zayn is NOT in the mood. He’s nervous and agitated, like he doesn’t even know what to do with his jittery hands. After being called something he like that, Liam understands why he’s not being so friendly towards Tyler.

 

Liam’s not really shocked by the casual use of homophobic language cause that’s how teens around here talk and it’s pretty much lost all meaning. Cocksucker. Queer. Dyke. Snatch. Twinky. The most negatively connotated words people use to degrade and humiliate someone because of their sexuality has all become a big joke now. Liam never used those kind of words. But Tyler clearly isn’t saying that in a joking way right now cause that’s not Zayn’s fucking name. Liam continues to eavesdrop from across the field anyways.

 

Tyler flips his long curls lavishly.

 

"You like them?"

 

Zayn shakes his head no, blank faced.

 

"Fuck you." Tyler laughs.

  
Zayn shakes his head again.

 

"Can't say I'd like that either." He sighs in mock sympathy.

 

Tyler smirks.

 

"Is that what you think I want from you?"

 

 _Yes_ . Liam thinks. That's all anyone ever wants from Zayn. And he just gives himself to them like it’s nothing. Even if he hates them.

 

"I know that's what you want. You look like you need some dick with this fucking Siegfried Norse jerry curl hair you've got going on here. And you really think I’m gonna fuck you after the last time I saw you? Like you’d ever be worth me. I’ve seen feral rats in the street eating shit worth more than you."

 

Liam winces as he even feels the burn of Zayn’s words. If he was Tyler and Zayn rejected him like that, he’d probably go home and cry.

  
Tyler's mouth falls open as he puffs out a harsh laugh like he's just been punched in the gut.

 

"Well you certainly haven't changed at all. Still a total asshole."

 

“An asshole you’ll never see.” Zayn shrugs uncaringly, going to turn away but Tyler grabs his wrist like before, pulling him back in roughly.

 

"We're not done here guy." He says low in Zayn’s ear. And in Liam’s.

 

Zayn pulls back a little as his eyes flit down Tyler’s face, almost looking like they’re about to kiss before he leans into Tyler’s ear.

  
  
_"In about 5 seconds_ ,” He says slow and seductively

 

_“We'll be more than done here if you don't let go of my fucking wrist."_

  
Tyler pulls him in closer.

 

 _"This is me saying I'm not leaving you alone until you let me take you out tomorrow night."_ _  
_

 

Zayn laughs as he look up at the sky, discreetly moving Tyler's wrist back below his waist, making him wince.

 

Liam thought he was groping him before but now he clearly sees that Zayn is actually bending his hand back as a threat.

 

"And this is me saying I will literally break your shit OFF if you can't take a hint. I'm. Not. Interested. Never have been. Never will be." He says calmly. They both let go roughly as Zayn smiles at Tyler’s glowering eyes.

  
"What's his name?" Tyler asks as he rubs his wrist.

  
"Who?"

  
"The reason you're always acting like you won’t be sucking my dick under the bleachers in a few minutes. I know it's not Louis."

 

"Are you asking me if I've got a boyfriend?" Zayn asks sarcastically, wiping the clean corners of his mouth.

 

"Have you?"

 

Zayn smirks, licking his lips and leaning in close. This is an extremely convincing and contradicting performance. If Liam couldn’t hear everything they were saying, he’d think they were seconds away from tearing each others clothes off. Like he did last time. Right now, Zayn’s expression and words tell Liam that Zayn really does hate Tyler but his body language keeps pulling him in. It’d would’ve been impossible for Liam to realise this was a charade before.

 

 _"I don't do boyfriends."_ Zayn says slyly.

"I’ve already got a girlfriend, I’m not asking for another.  I just wanna take you out." Tyler shrugs.

 

_"I'm taken already."_

_  
_ "By yourself?" Tyler motions wanking himself.

   
Zayn’s head hangs back as he looks straight up at the sky again, laughing loudly and hanging off the fence, squatting down to the ground briefly before popping back up.

   
"Why are you bothering me?" He sighs tiredly when he looks back at Tyler again.

  
  
"Cause you’re a feisty little shit. I like bothering you." Tyler leans in to close the gap but Zayn keeps him a small distance away, which makes Tyler roll his eyes.

 

“Why are you so fucking stuck up, huh?”

 

"The last time I saw you, you called me a bitch ass Paki cause I wouldn’t fuck you at your party." Zayn says, completely serious now.

 

"And you called me a cracker and threw up on my bed." Tyler retorts. Zayn laughs heartily.

 

"Was I really that pissed?" His voice is high pitched as he laughs.

 

“ _Cracker… walking abortion, attempted faggot-rapists_ , yeah it's all coming back to me now. I didn’t forget."

 

Liam holds his burning chest. He knew Zayn was fucking brutal but… he’s never heard him say something like that before. It’s not surprising at all but… it’s still strange that he’d say that to someone and still go and hook-up with them. Cause if he’s saying that Tyler tried to _rape_ him while he was drunk...then Louis wasn’t really lying about that.

 

Tyler only laughs.

 

“I didn't realise you were a _racist.”_

 

“Said the privileged, “straight” white boy to the paki faggot right?” Zayn squints at his clean white cleats, kicking at the ground casually.

 

“What about that dopey puppy always following you around? Is he some kind of special cracker or do you have selective eyesight?”

 

Zayn freezes before he looks up at him again with daggers.

 

“I don’t know who the fuck you think you’re calling DOPEY but if you want any TEETH left in that shit-talking mouth of yours,” Zayn snatches his hand away from Tyler as his fist balls up, making Tyler shake his head quickly, suddenly struck with nervousness with his hands up.

 

“I was only joking-”

 

“Well JOKE about someone else before your balls get busted in front of all these nice people.” Zayn shakes his head seriously with a dangerous glint in his eye at the obvious mention of Liam.

 

Even Liam is nervous right now even though he doesn’t remember Zayn getting into a fight at the game. Zayn turns into a demon just the same when he’s beating someone’s ass, and he’s in more than just in really bad mood right now. God he’s hot when he’s angry but… no, Liam shakes that thought out of his head. Fighting is bad.

"You're seriously going to hell, y'know that?" Tyler shakes his head at him.

  
  
"Can't be that bad if you made it back out." Zayn shrugs.

  
"Let me take you out and I can make my shit-talking mouth up to you. We can go together."

 

"The last time you “took me out”, you and your fucking friends tried to _gang_ _rape_ me." Zayn says through clenched teeth.

 

Zayn always had _horrible_ taste in guys. Liam is finding himself totally baffled by this entire exchange now. It’s not even about the fact that Zayn hooks up with boys who treat Liam like shit. He does it with people that treat him _way worse_. Like a body. Not a person.

 

“I didn’t put that bottle down your throat mate. You wanted it.”

 

Zayn squints at him, shaking his head.

 

“Oh will you fuck off you? I’ve got better things to do tonight than getting arrested for cracking your face open right now.”

  
"Where is he?"

  
Tyler looks around the stands.

 

 _"#11."_ Zayn tells him this time with a hard look in his eye.

  
Liam gets goosebumps when Tyler looks directly at him. That's his Jersey number.

 

"Don't look!" Zayn yanks Tyler's head to look back at him so he won't make it obvious.

 

Tyler smiles at Zayn’s sudden nervousness.

 

"Who's #11 again?"

 

"Who do you think?"

 

Tyler knows Liam.

  
  
"The virgin huh?” he says as he and Liam make eye contact. 

   
Zayn nods once.

 

“That’s nice. Only took, what? 1,000 years?”

 

“17 years, 1 week, too many days.”

 

“Wow you’re _really_ creepy.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

"He's watching us."

  
"And the longer I waste my time standing here talking to scumbag rapists that cheat on their pretty girlfriends with cocksuckers, the more he's reaffirming that I'm a filthy slut."

 

“Like you give a shit about Danielle.”

 

“I don’t.”

 

"And that’s cause you _are_ a filthy slut. A _beautiful_ dirty little slut. It’s your best attribute. Nothin' wrong with that."

 

Zayn shakes his head.

 

"I'm not looking to be a slut anymore."

 

"Why?"

 

"He doesn't like sex."

 

“But you do.”

 

“You dunno what I like.”

 

Tyler tilts his head sideways.

 

“What do you like?”

 

“I like him and I want him to like me too. That’ll never happen if I keep degrading myself by associating with wastes of space such as yourself.”

 

Tyler isn’t put off with Zayn’s blatant detest for him in the slightest. Obviously he’s just trying to get in Zayn’s pants right now and he seems remarkably confident that he’s getting what he wants no matter what.

 

“So that’s it for all the boys dying at your feet then huh. You’re just putting off your natural need to release your load for some straight guy who doesn’t even like you.”

 

Is he talking about himself right now?

 

“Yes.” Zayn says without a single falter. Tyler almost laughs again.

  
"How in God’s name are you ever gonna be satisfied with him?"

 

Zayn tilts his head to the side, unimpressed.

 

"I'm not sleeping with you Ty. _Ever_. You wanna get struck by lightening saying that, I’m gonna just go now." Zayn emphasizes.

 

Tyler still won’t let him walk away, holding his arm, squeezing harder than necessary. Liam’s fists clench. He can just feel the utter debauchery emitting from Tyler.

 

“You are _really_ testing my patience right now.” Zayn laughs, although there’s nothing funny about his tone.

 

“When did you suddenly get _standards?”_

 

“I obviously don't. I'm talking to trash aren't I? I’m trying to be someone who doesn’t do this,” Zayn gestures between them.

 

“Anymore.”

 

“Trying to be someone you’re not.” Tyler corrects him as he looks Zayn dead in the eye. And Liam realises Zayn can’t leave Tyler cause he’s stuck looking at himself in his eyes. And the person Tyler sees is a filthy slut. So that’s all Zayn sees too.

 

“Maybe I don’t want to be me anymore.” Zayn says with dim eyes as Tyler wrings out his wrist, keeping him stuck where he is.

 

"Why would you change yourself for someone else?"

 

"So he won't have to change for me."

 

Liam's heart clenches. He can’t believe this is how this conversation actually went down. It’s… kind of rocking him uneasily. On one hand, Zayn was willing to put himself away and be someone he thought would bring him closer to Liam. On the other, he’s still got this baggage, weighing him down, keeping him somewhere he really doesn’t want to be. Liam’s about to go over there right now and let Zayn know he doesn’t have to climb mountains to be with him. He can just be himself. He hates that Zayn has always felt like he has to be someone he’s not. Cause he’s wonderful how he is.

 

"You'll never last." Tyler tuts.

 

“What do I have to do to get you to leave me the fuck alone?”

 

Tyler rubs down Zayn's arm sleazily.

 

“Who said I’m ever leaving you alone?”

 

"If I actually suck your dick right now will you really fuck off?" Zayn offers seriously.

 

Liam’s mouth pops open. After everything they just said to each other, even after bringing up the fact that this fucking guy tried to actually rape Zayn and he’s still offering to get him off? Liam’s getting the feeling that Zayn is more afraid of Tyler than he’s actually letting on. Cause maybe he would fight him if he made him angry enough. But not in his own defence. Cause he’s not going away and he’s not letting Zayn leave until he gets what he wants. Zayn’s vanity in his appearance really is a curse. Attracting people to him isn’t always a good thing. Cause it attracts the worst kinds of people too.

  
"Tell you what, I’ll leave you alone for now to be with your straight virgin if that’s what you’re asking. Cause you’ll be crawling back on your knees eventually. I don’t see celibacy working for you."

 

That’s almost… exactly what Louis said to him the day Lux ate him.

 

“Will you really?” Zayn asks seriously. Tyler shrugs.

 

“Sure. I get the honour in being the “last” dick Zayn Malik is ever gonna taste.” He laughs.

 

“Don’t flatter yourself babe. I’m only doing it cause I need to get it out of my system and the best way to do that is taste the nastiest pile of gamy dick I can find cause I know you probably taste like diluted bleach and cigarette ash. Consider this my dick aversion therapy. So the next time you see me, you better walk the other fucking way. You just caught me on a lucky night. After what you guys tried to do to me at that party, I should be stabbing you in your fucking throat right now but I can’t get arrested tonight. So I’M using YOU. If you come anywhere near me again, I won’t even say anything. Cause I’m warning you right now. Is that fucking clear?”

 

“Why do you speak so goddamn violent? That’s strangely attractive.” Tyler helps him climb over the fence.

 

“Although you’d probably have better luck going to one of those pray the gay away sessions don’t you think? There’s an arab church you go to with the other terrorists around the corner isn’t there.” Tyler smiles, hand all over the ass and all as he boosts Zayn over to his side.

 

He laughs as Zayn slaps his hand off.

 

“The sanctimonious place of worship I visit is known as a MOSQUE dumbass. If you’re gonna chat shit, at least know what the words mean. Pakistanis are Asian, not Arab.” Zayn glazes over the fact that Tyler just called him a terrorist of course as Tyler pulls him under the bleachers.

 

Liam gasps awake then, sweating like a horse. It’s dark in the room but the open window and heat tells him where he is still. But his dream has left him feeling uneasy. Why would Zayn even do that to himself? Put himself in a position where people who have actually taken advantage of him when he’s drunk can get whatever they want from him. It makes Liam sick to even think about. So he shoves the thoughts about it away for now.

 

One, half-day spent in hell leaves Liam with a full lifetime’s worth of exhaustion. But this bed he’s in feels like he’s being hugged by angels and it makes him feel nice and warm. He’s not exactly sure how long he’s been asleep but he knows it’s been a few hours and he wakes up wanting to go home. And it’s laying right here across from him. His back is to Liam.

 

He reaches out towards him, brushing his fingers against his back, feeling him breathing easy as he sleeps.

 

Liam knows it’s Zayn cause the wardrobe next to the bed is opened and in the mirror, another Zayn is sitting on the window sill, watching the storm quietly.

 

Liam quickly looks behind him as his heart jumps, across the room at the window. No one’s actually there.

 

“You’re back.” A voice comes from the wardrobe.

 

When Liam looks back at the mirror, Lux is standing right in front of it, leaning against the side with his hands hanging halfway in the pockets of his sweats without a shirt, watching them with his grey eyes beaming in the dark like a cat.

 

Liam stares at the reflection for a few minutes at least, frozen in place with wide eyes as he looks over Zayn laying next to him. It’s not even the fact of how bizarre and terrifying it should be that there’s someone standing in the mirror. It’s the fact that he looks like Zayn but… he’s not Zayn.

 

The lights are off in the room so it’s kind of dark aside from the light from the window. But the window is behind Lux in the mirror so it’s mostly a silhouette. There’s a foreboding shadow over his face but Liam can see his eyes and his bare arms and chest clearly.

 

His skin is golden brown like his brothers, glazing like he’s wearing bronzer. It shines right through the surface of the glass. He can’t see his face clearly but he can see that his hair is much shorter than Zayn’s right now but still a little shaggy. Wavy and curling right at the nape of his neck. Even the weird tattoo on his wrist where Zayn’s sun is supposed to be is there, wrapping around his wrist like a bracelet, just like in the painting. It’s in another language. That’s the only tattoo on his arm. Liam supposes he’s not exactly Zayn’s reflection. It’s Nars.

 

It’s startling to actually see him. Or part of him anyways.

 

Liam sits up from the bed slowly, getting up as he climbs over Zayn carefully and approaches the mirror, squinting into it. His own reflection isn’t in it at all. Just Lux in the room.

 

Liam stops right in front of the mirror.

 

“What do you mean I’m back?”

 

“You left.” Lux shrugs.

 

“Went back to the surface for a while.”

 

Liam supposes he means he left his body.

 

“I was dreaming. Don’t you sleep?”

 

Lux smurfs at the back of his throat.  

 

“So… you live in there?” He asks slowly when Lux doesn’t say anything else.

 

His head tilts sideways in the mirror as he laughs.

 

“No. Zayn always puts me in here. He bought all kinds of mirrors from a dealer around the corner and set them up all over the house. What kind of shit is that?” His voice is so strange.

 

He sounds like Zayn still but… his accent is impossible to place. Unformed and indisputable.

 

You know those people you meet that have such generic faces that you instantly forget what they look like after they’re not there anymore? That’s how Lux sounds. The minute he stops talking, it’s like Liam forgets what he sounds like, only left remembering what he’s said.

 

“I didn’t have to be in here. But Zayn’s having a nightmare I don’t wanna see.”

 

Liam’s eyebrows raise. He looks back at Zayn, frowning in his sleep.

 

Lux leans against the side on his back, looking at the ground.

 

“Sorry I pushed you out before. I’ve sort of got the temperament of hellfire.”

 

Liam snorts as he looks at him again.

 

“Yeah, I _noticed_.”

 

Lux starts to float back over to the window.

 

“Hey, wait,” Liam steps closer but his finger get stopped by the glass. Lux looks back at him, waiting.

 

“Can you… come out?”

 

“Come out of the dark?”

 

“No,” Liam shakes his head, tapping the glass. “The mirror.”

 

“If I come out, I’ll be in him. We’re stuck together. He can’t leave as long as my pit is in his body, I can’t leave this thing on my own without a pit.”

 

“You don’t have any kakos right now?”

 

“How do you know that word?”

 

Liam can hear the smirk in his voice.

 

“Tony told Harry what it is I think.” Liam was half dead when he was explaining it so he was too busy slipping in and out of consciousness to catch everything he said. That was pretty much all he heard. Along with the fact that Lux might have a boyfriend.

 

“That’s cause he never knows how to shut the fuck up.” Lux scoffs.

 

“So you’re not really a demon right now…”

 

Lux hops in the window sill again, leaning his head back and watching the storm outside. Liam’s not sure if a non-answer means yes or no. He’s still conscious so, he must be. Cause a reflection can’t move or think on it’s own right?

 

“Does it feel weird in there?” Liam keeps asking him stuff anyways. Even if he doesn’t answer, he still asks. The outline of Lux’s his profile is Zayn.

 

“You can’t feel much of anything without a body.”

 

Liam supposes he already knew that. So most of his emotion and senses are in Zayn’s body, which might be why he’s so subdued right now compared to how he usually is.

 

Liam sits back on the bed, looking down at Zayn sleeping underneath him as he’s grimacing at whatever he’s dreaming about, clinging to his pillow. Liam moves his hair out of his face.

 

“I wasn’t kidding when I said I’m cutting that fucking hair.” Lux says as he leaning against the window. Liam smiles.

 

“Why are you so against long hair?”

 

“It’s disgusting. Makes me feel like a wild animal.”

 

“Your hair looks pretty shaggy.”

 

“Cause I’ve been stuck in a body and unable to get a fucking haircut for a month and a half. But it’s not touching my ass crack innit?”

 

Liam laughs as they get into a long discussion about what hair length is appropriate for everyday use. After almost an hour later with them both sitting cross legged in the dark across from each other, Liam can’t help noticing things about him a little more. Like how he does seem to mimic him a little. If Liam crosses his legs, Lux crosses his. If Liam changes arms his leaning on behind him, Lux might do it too eventually. Maybe Liam’s just overthinking it now that he knows what Lux is. People do that when they talk normally anyways, right?

 

“This is just as new to me as it is to you. Never been in one of these goddamn things before this shit happened.” Lux tuts, knocking a knuckle against the glass on the other side. His tattoo twists all the way around his wrist. I looks like it might be written in arabic or something.

 

“What’s that say on your wrist?” Liam gestures to his own, tapping where his moon is. Lux looks down at his hand.

 

“ _Adhara.”_

 

A chill sweeps through Liam all of the sudden… and it’s not Lux. It feels like his insides had a little gasp for breath without making it to the surface. He squints at his arms, seeing the hairs rising on them.

 

“What’s that…” He pauses for a second as he blinks, gazing at his moon crescent. He’s been having moments a deja vu all day but… this is the strongest he’s felt it yet. Like it’s all over his entire body.

 

“What’s that mean?”

 

“Means maidenship _.”_

 

“Maidenship?” Liam doesn’t know what that word means.

 

“ _Virginity.”_ Lux clarifies.

 

“Why would you get that on your wrist?”

 

“Not my tat.”

 

“Oh… right,” Liam nods with his eyes closed. He didn’t like thinking about Narcissus but… he does want to know more about him. Maybe if he found out as much as possible, they could figure out how to break the curse without Zayn dying.

 

“And it’s a name of a constellation anyways. Narcissus was more into astrology than philosophy. Epsilon Canis Major was his favourite star. People called her Adara.”

 

“Why a girl?”

 

“I didn’t say she was a girl.”

 

Liam’s head tilts a little.

 

“They say _she_ cause the light her body emitted made the sky roseate all night. Especially in the daytime.” Lux shrugs.

 

Liam somehow knows what that word means although he’s sure he’s never heard it before. Rose-coloured. So… the sky was pink all day and all night. Like an endless sunset. Liam can’t even fathom how beautiful that would’ve looked.

 

“I’ve never heard of a star in the daytime.”

 

“Yeah you have. You see the sun everyday. That’s a type of star, it’s just surrounded by planets. Adara was something similar to that but… she died many years ago. But you can still see her in the sky, every time the sun sets and rises.”

 

Liam leans back against the bed.

 

“How can you see a dead star?”

 

Lux doesn’t lean back like how he thought he would. If he did, he’d be leaning out of the shadow. Liam thinks he’s staying in the dark on purpose now.

 

“When you look at the stars in the sky, you are looking at your past.”

 

Liam nods his head back as he listens to his voice that leaves his words hanging in the space between them, closing his eyes.

 

“Light is the 2nd fastest thing in the entire universe. The only thing that surpasses it is death. It can reach out and touch you even after death has taken the star it came from. So when you look up in the sky, you might still see their light but the stars that projected it might have died already. Light is infinite and transitional, like the human soul. It can cross-over into a new body after the star dies, moving freely through the world of the mortal and the divine… but it isn’t immortal. It can be destroyed by darkness. Stars live just as mortal any regular human being. They are born, they live, and they die. Then the process restarts again. Sometimes by the time their light reaches Earth, their lifetime will have ended thousands of years ago. But to a star, a thousand years can be a simple blink of the eye. Eventually, the light will fade into invisibility after it’s died. Like humans, it’s born somewhere else. Adara was once the brightest star in the night sky. You could see her even in the day. But as time went on, she faded more and more until there was nothing left but dust. The light moved on somewhere else. You can still see her memory up there every time the sky turns pink. But that’s all that remains of the faint glow of her dying breath. Like a visible sigh in the cosmos.”

 

Liam’s eyebrows knit together, trying to hold onto the sound of Lux’s voice as he talks but it just keeps slipping away like sand in his fingers.

 

“Stars breathe?” He asks as he feels himself consciously breathing in space, feeling his pulse gradually picking up.

 

“Every time you see a flickering glow in the sky, you’re watching a star breathe.”

 

“Did you ever see Adara?”

 

When he looks at the mirror again, Lux is gone.

 

“Yes.” He appears again.

 

Actually, he never left. He’s just standing now, leaning at the side on his back as he looks up at the ceiling. Liam didn’t even notice him standing up again. This is why he hated mirrors. They’re too trippy. He doesn’t like looking into an illusion. He might stand right in front of a mirror and it looks like no one is there. Like right now.

 

“I’ve never bothered to look at the sky though.” He shrugs.

 

“Really?”

 

“Didn’t really spend my time on the surface stargazing, I was too busy fucking around here and there.”

 

Liam doesn’t laugh at that.

 

“I thought you seen Adara?” He changes the subject.

 

“I have.”

 

Liam doesn’t get these contradictory things he always says. Like when he says he doesn’t have a face or eyes when he knows Liam can clearly see his eyes. Everything he says always feels like it has a double or triple meaning.

 

“Why’d he like her so much?”

 

“Cause no one looked at him or touched him like she did. She was so beautiful, when her glow touched him, she made him feel beautiful too.”

 

That sounds like a really sweet love story but… Liam doesn’t get how they were together.

 

“How can a human can be with a star?”

 

“Can’t.” Lux shrugs.

 

“It’s against the law. Astral beings and human beings live on two totally separate planes of existence. Two different worlds. Nars’ world was down on Earth and Adara’s was in the sky. The reality is, she could touch him but he could never touch her. No one could. That’s why they called her a virgin. The laws of physics... reality... even time were against him. If a human touched something as hot as a star’s body, they’d die. It would take a human thousands of years to even get close enough to a star to touch it on the other side of the universe, completely opposite to Earth. You’d die in outer space. For them to ever be together… was impossible in every sense of the word. A mortal thinking they have the ability to surpass death and touch a star, go into a world where only Gods are allowed, thinking he can act like an immortal being… was arrogance. Overconfidence. Hubris. _Stupidity_.”

 

“Did he ever touch her?” Liam shakes his head.

 

“I dunno. He’s right behind you so, why don’t you ask him.”

 

Liam laughs a little.   

 

Lux reaches to the ground and picks up a pack of cigarettes that are at Liam’s feet, taking one out and snapping his two fingers like usual, producing fire. The brief glow lights up his face for a few seconds as his eyes stay trained on the end of his cigarette and Liam holds back the urge to gasp even if his muscles contract. He looks exactly like Zayn, just with golden brown skin. And he’s fucking gorgeous.

 

The light dies down again as he smokes. Liam can actually smell it in the room. This whole mirror experience was really throwing him through a loop. He watches Lux float against the wardrobe still with his ankles crossed over each other as he looks out the window. Liam kind of wonders what he’s looking at out there. He’s never seen the sky. Never seen his own face. All he’s ever seen is hell.

 

“Have you can ever tried to see your face?”

 

Lux looks at him again.

 

“Lima I fucking told you a million times I haven’t got a face. That’s like asking a glass of wine if she wants to try a drink.”

 

Maybe he doesn’t realise that Liam just saw his face.

 

That was an interesting choice of pronoun there. They all seemed to give inanimate objects gender pronouns. Maybe because they all used to be inanimate objects themselves and now, they use pronouns too. Cause Lux doesn’t call himself a boy but he still uses “he”. Like that star tattooed across his wrist.

 

“Why didn’t you _tell_ me?” Liam finally asks the obvious question here.

 

“Did tell you.”

 

“You told Safaa and then you lied to me when I asked.”

 

“I don’t fancy being called a liar. I told you I was a demon cause that’s all you wanted to know.” Lux shakes his head as he blows out smoke, dabbing his cigarette as he looks down.

 

“And you didn’t ask.”

 

Liam squints.

 

“I totally asked! And you said you came from a human who lusted after his reflection. You never said it was you.”

 

 **“Maybe I didn’t want you to fucking know!”** He snaps sharply as multiple voices sound through the glass, fully formed and his own visible form glitches in the mirror. It cracks a little.

 

Liam doesn’t flinch, continuing to stare at him unblinkingly as he’s totally unbothered by his outbursts at this point. Even as he tries to see his face in the dark with his enhanced sight, it’s somehow impossible to actually see clearly. He’s been standing in the shadow on purpose. Liam knows he has a face cause he just saw it not even 2 minutes ago.

 

“You were staring at me straight in the eye for a fucking hour. You seriously didn’t notice you were staring at yourself?”

 

“I didn’t know what the hell I was looking at!” Liam almost yells at him from the ground.

 

“I see myself and it looks like someone I can’t recognise. How was I supposed to know?”

 

Lux pulls his cigarette out and puts his hand up a little in a pause.

 

“Okay you’re gonna lower your fucking tone, screaming at me right now before I break this goddamn mirror into pieces and crack your fucking skull in half.”

 

Liam can’t help laughing. He actually sounds exactly like Zayn even without his voice being distinguishable with his violent, empty threats. Lux snorts, shaking his head.  

 

“I didn’t want you to be afraid of me.” He admits in a sigh.

 

“So after showing up in my bedroom after seeing me watch you eat Louis’ soul and backing me into a corner with your distorted voices… you didn’t want me to be afraid of you?”

 

“Polyphonic.” He says. Liam tilts his head.

 

“What?”

 

“My voice is polyphonic. Consisting of many. You can do it too.”

 

So there’s a name for it. Of course he’s a useless-words-no-one-knows junkie like Zayn.

 

“Yeah I know. It comes out of me without warning.”

 

“I would show you how to control your powers but, you won’t have them for very long so I guess I don’t have to.”

 

Liam nods, looking at his lap dourly. Right. He’s destroying his own pit in 12 days. The notion that he’d do that for Liam at all is insane. Cause at least Zayn knows he’ll still be alive no matter how many times he dies. Lux however… won’t be coming back. Like he said, once his pit is destroyed, it’ll be nothing. He’ll be… nothing.

 

“And that wasn’t me trying to scare you.” Lux adds as the topic has just taken a nosedive.

 

“Then what were you doing?” Liam looks back up at him.

 

Lux takes a really long drag, puffing smoke towards the ceiling, blowing out even a little bit of golden black hellfire that touches Liam, making him salivate at the taste of it in the air. Lux’s eyes seem to glow in the dark as he looks at Liam again.

 

“That was me planning on _fucking_ you.”

 

Liam’s mouth pops open as he looks back at Zayn quickly. He’s still asleep.

 

He keeps forgetting that actually happened with them, in real life, and not in some figment of an old dream. All three of them at the same time. Like… a really weird threesome. He fucked a reflection. He almost laughs at the image he has of how his therapist would look at him if he told her that. If he told her _any_ of this shit.

 

Liam supposes he subconsciously knew he was looking into a reflection 3 days ago when he started to look totally unrecognisable. He thought his brain was just psyching him out like it always does. His eyes are just so piercing. It was just a strange experience in general for Liam.

 

“So you didn’t know you eyes were grey?” Liam moves one swiftly as he fidgets with the big silver rings on Zayn’s finger dangling by his face, tracing the opal on his index finger.

 

“I can’t see into a mirror. Only out. Being stuck in one isn’t very fun so I avoided them just the same as you. Probably for the same reason.”

 

Liam ignores the last half of that comment, looking out the open door, into the clean living room at the portrait above the couch.

 

“But… there’s a picture of you out there on the wall.”

 

“That’s Narcissus. He naturally had brown eyes, amber around it exactly like Zayn. So I figured I did too. But I’ll never see myself anyways so I never really cared to dwell on it much.” He shrugs.

 

Liam thinks about that, feeling his chest murmur, telling Liam something Lux just said isn’t really true.

 

He still had amber like Zayn… sort of. He supposes he’d have to be looking pretty hard to find colour in his eyes. They were right in each other’s faces 3 days ago though so, of course Liam could see the colour.

 

“Have you ever tried taking a picture of yourself? That’s not a reflection right?”

 

Lux laughs, scratching behind his hair as he shakes his head.

 

“Ummm, that’s an interesting idea… but no. A reflection has more than one definition. I probably still wouldn’t show up to look like anything without Zayn.”

 

So he does talk with a double meaning in everything. Liam hates that. He’s not a very deep thinker. He chews the inside of his cheek as he tries to understand what the hell that could possibly mean. He doesn’t want to ask to explain cause he’ll feel like a dumbass. And he doesn’t want to ask him to come closer either since he clearly doesn’t want to. He thinks Liam will be afraid to see him. Maybe Liam would. But he still wants to see anyways.

 

“Do you want to try? I’ve got a camera phone.” He asks, which makes Lux laugh again.

 

“If you really want to see me you could just ask.”

 

When Liam nods, Lux beckons for him to come back towards him.

 

It’s one thing to assume or see a picture or see him for 3 seconds. Actually seeing him completely in his bodiless form as a conscious, animated reflection? Liam would officially be able to say he’s seen and done it all.

 

Lux hesitantly leans closer at the same time as Liam after he stands up again, out of the shadow and into the light mimicking Liam and Liam’s heart almost stops. He’s looking at himself in the mirror.

 

Not himself right now… his old self. Glasses and slightly curly hair and pudgy cheeks and all he sees is his dad on the other side as Lux has changed his face into someone else.

 

Liam’s mouth pops open. His reflection behaves like a normal, gaping right back at him like he’s in shock too.

 

He stops mimicking Liam as his face drops into a bored expression, moving without him and tilting his head a little to take off his glasses, taking another drag, exhaling through his nostrils as he squints down the the glasses. There doesn’t seem to be a real logical reasoning for isn’t why Liam hasn’t fainted yet.

 

He backs away from the mirror as his body seizes up, stumbling back a little and falling on the bed. He sits right on Zayn’s face, waking him a little as he pushes Liam butt off him.

 

“The fuck are you… doing?” He mumbles, only half-awake.

 

“What? Is there something on my face?” Liam’s own voice asks him.

 

 _“LUXURIA STOP IT!”_ Zayn pulls Liam away from the mirror from behind, turning Liam around so he’s looking at him instead, holding his face in between his hands.

 

Liam’s eyes dart between Zayn’s as his body jitters.

 

“ _Lima it’s okay it’s not real_ ,” Zayn says gently, wiping his tears off his cheeks he hadn’t even noticed. He looks back at the mirror again.

 

Lux is gliding back over to the window casually like a shadow, looking like Zayn again from behind as he hops on the sill, leaning his head against it and going back to watching the storm. He reminds Liam of one of those depressed caged animals in a zoo. He can’t really do much in there but pace back and forth. Maybe he isn’t looking at anything out the window.

 

Zayn turns his face back to him, pulling him into bed.

 

“He’s just being a dick, don’t look at him. Lay back down with me.”

 

Liam nods as he climbs back in bed. He doesn’t think Lux was being mean. He was just showing him what he looked like. Cause he’s right. He does look different with glasses. He looks like an old man. And Liam hates seeing his face like that.

 

He briefly wonders what it actually looks like in there. To only ever be able to look out of a mirror instead of into it, how would it be to never see your own face your entire life? Or not even have a face of your own at all, given someone else’s instead.

 

Liam is starting to think he’s been in one before… and Lux knows that. When he’d look in the mirror and disassociate… now that he knows he really does leave his body, maybe he’s been unknowingly jumping into the mirror. Cause he’d look and see Geoff so his brain would make it look like no one would be there as a defence mechanism. He wouldn’t feel anything at all and he’d feel trapped. Like… he was on the other side, looking out. He was avoiding mirrors for a reason.  

 

“I’m sorry I hurt you.” Liam says quickly. Zayn shakes his head as he lies back down sleepily.

 

“It’s okay. Accidents happen. If you do that to me again your ass is mine.” Zayn’s fist pushes against Liam’s chest, pushing him back lightly.

 

Liam snorts as he looks down at Zayn’s hand, inserting his fingers into the slots and holding them together as he watches Zayn rest with his eyes closed.

 

He glances behind him towards the mirror while Zayn isn’t looking, back at Lux again in the window. He looks pretty calm as his leg dangles on the side with the other one propped up, swinging back and forth lazily with one hand in his pocket, smoking his cigarette. The fire in the window outlines his body around him, like he might be surrounded in fire himself. He isn’t paying Zayn and Liam any attention at all.

 

He looks at Zayn again, rubbing over his hand.

  
  
"Are you still… mad at me?" He quietly asks. Zayn doesn’t say anything, which means yes.

 

  
"I don’t want you to be mad at me."

 

"Then go home."

 

Liam frowns.

 

"You are home."

 

“I’m not your _mummy.”_

 

“You’re my Zaynie though,” Liam smiles tightly.

 

When Zayn doesn’t reply, his shoulders fall as he closes his eyes too.

 

“Zayn,” He says shakily, trying not to cry.

 

“I can’t go back there.” He’s almost begging Zayn to let him stay as a tear rolls down his face but Zayn’s not even looking at him.

 

"Then I can't stop being mad at you."

 

Maybe it was selfish for Liam to refuse to leave but he really doesn't know what he'd do without Zayn. Considering what’s happening, he just wants to be with him for as long as he possibly can. But… he does understand that Zayn has way too much on his plate and maybe Liam can’t be with him and he’s putting his life in danger the longer he stays here but… he’d honest to God rather die than go back to his life up there.

 

“I know you have a lot to do and I’ll probably just distract you and I’m sorry I’m so clingy like, driving cars into bottomless pits and shit just to see you,”

 

Zayn snorts a little with as his nose wrinkles in the corners, which makes Liam smile a little. He’s still not quite used to Liam swearing.

 

“... but I like really love you alot and my entire life basically revolves around you and maybe that’s super unhealthy or something but whatever. It’s true and I can’t live on the surface without you ever again. I feel… _dead_ without you up there."

  
  
Zayn opens his eyes then and he looks sad.

  
"Babe… you’re not clingy. I don’t even really know what that is. Don’t listen to Louis. And you’re not gonna die without me _please_ don’t say that. I’m not Romeo and you’re not Juliet.”

 

“I think I’d rather be Juliet. She’s younger.”

 

“Lima,” Zayn doesn’t even crack a smile at his lame joke.

 

Liam frowns again exaggeratedly as he looks down.

 

“Oh my god enough with the puppy eyes.” Zayn groans.

 

Liam looks back up, batting his eyelashes. Zayn rolls his eyes, sighing as he looks down at his neck and Liam gets a paranoid nervousness now when Zayn can’t seem to bare looking him in the eye. Cause he can leave Liam if he’s not looking him in the eye.

 

“I have rules."

 

His clenched heart releases a bit as his hand squeezes around Zayn’s more between them. He’s not kicking him out.

  
"What are your rules?" He urges, careful not to sound too eager.

 

Zayn puts one finger on Liam's nose with his free-hand.

 

“You’re not allowed outside no matter what. Ever."

 

Liam nods. Literally everything he needed was already right here.

 

Zayn puts a second finger, dragging them down to his lips.

 

"When I’m not here, don't let anyone else in the house. Even if they look like me. No matter what they say. If they can’t get in, they’re not supposed to be here. Don't let anything trick you."

 

Liam gulps. That sounded a little scary but he nods anyways without asking what would be trying to get in the house or where he’d be if he’s not here.

 

“I have shit outside of this house I’ve gotta do so, I’m not even gonna be here that much, ”

 

“I trust you. I know you wouldn’t let anything happen to me.”

 

Zayn frowns as his face pinches, like he can’t agree with that but he continues anyways.

  
"Don't make yourself vulnerable to a demon or any other being here. You are a snack to them. All they want is your soul. Don’t make yourself a snack to anyone but ME."

 

Liam smiles as he bites his lip.

 

"Okay, I get it. Don't leave the house, don't let anyone in, be careful, don't trust demons. Except you." Liam nods again.

 

"And the number one rule," Zayn leans in close, lifting up Liam’s chin now.

 

"Don't. _Fuck_ . My demon."

 

“Har. Har.” Lux deadpans in mirror as he’s looking out the window. Liam almost forgot he was even there. He looks at his silhouette as he’s shaking his head to himself.

 

“ _Him almost dying 5 fucking minutes ago wasn’t enough for you_?” He hisses as he looks at them.

 

“Avaritia MUTILATED his body over a fucking TV. What the fuck do you think is gonna happen next time?!”

 

Zayn closes his eyes as a tear falls down his face. When Liam looks back at him, he’s shaking his head.

 

“Z-”

  
  
"No," Zayn chokes up when Liam tries to come any closer, pushing him away.

 

  
“No he’s right you… you have to go home. You can’t stay here.”

 

Liam shakes his head quickly, wiping Zayn’s face.

 

"No, no, I heard everything you said! I won’t go outside! I’ll.. I’ll stay in this ROOM if that helps, Zaynie _please-_ "

 

"NO!" Zayn pushes Liam away from him like Lux did before.

 

“No Zaynie, no you staying in HELL! You can’t… trust me with your life. I can’t... DO that to you, I can’t-”

 

Liam’s chest squeezes tight as he holds back tears too.

 

“Zayn I can’t go back there,” His voice sounds like nothing. Cause Zayn won’t hear it.

 

“You’re going back tomorrow.”

 

He turns Liam's shoulder around so he faces away from him, the other way. Liam sinks into the bed as he squeezes his eyes closed, letting his negative thoughts take off, thinking Zayn must fucking hate him. Even if he knows that’s not true, a little voice insists that it is. A little voice insisting that he doesn’t want him and he’d be better off dead. A voice that maybe isn’t talking about Zayn.

 

Reminding Liam of the fact that he can’t even look at Liam. He’s never looked at Liam once in his life. He left, not even expecting to ever see Liam again in his lifetime. Even if it’s only because of a curse, it doesn't make Zayn turning away from him hurt any less. Actually it makes it hurt even more. Cause this has all happened to Liam before in the past.

 

After a full minute of Liam drowning in awful thoughts, Zayn's arms snake around him, one coming under to wrap around Liam’s chest while the other around his tummy, pulling Liam back into him gently.

  
He pulls down the collar of Liam’s t-shirt and kisses the side of his shoulder.

 

Liam relaxes back against him with his eyes squeezed closed, feeling his lips moving up his skin.

 

“ _’m always gonna love you Lima._ ” He mumbles as he continues to kiss up Liam’s shoulder until he reaches his throat. Liam tilts his head a little as he sighs. Zayn’s lips move over his collarbone trailing up and making his stomach flutter.

 

_“Won’t you miss me?”_

 

Zayn shakes his head, too busy showering Liam with reverent, soft kisses that makes Liam feel missed very dearly to retort.

 

 _“Finally getting rid of you.”_ he breathes as he lifts up, looking down at Liam below him with wet eyes.

 

“ _Every inch of you,”_ he turns Liam on his back as he leans over him to reach the soft spot in the crook of his neck.

 

Liam gasps when the bundle of nerves all spark and spreads goosebumps all over his body. It’s where Zayn originally bit into him but also where Avaritia bit into him as well now, adding a bigger, more fresh scar over the already existing one. Liam hums quietly, holding onto Zayn’s bent elbows at his sides where he’s holding Liam’s waist, wrapping one arm around Liam’s back as he nips at the area with heated intent.

 

 _“I’m gonna miss you so fucking much.”_ Liam’s voice breaks in half, unable to keep the tears from falling in bulk now, cause he’s never gonna see Zayn ever again after this.

 

He feels his body churning with earnest, sorrow. It shrinks his pit into a small pea and makes him feel like he’s too exposed, crying like this, practically sobbing when he’s not alone. But he can be like this with Zayn, rubbed raw until there’s nothing left but the two of them here.

 

Zayn’s beard feels so rousing against the sensitive skin at his neck and jaw as their lips mold into each other, rising the bubbles of yearning in him as well, coiling up hot in his body like he’s already missing him despite how close they are right now. But… it’s not close enough. They’re never close enough. Liam wants to feel Zayn too.

 

He can feel himself getting hard against him. And so is Zayn. He wants to feel it more. He hasn’t been able to feel Zayn for more than 2 seconds he wants to feel all of him, every inch, as close as he can as he can as _hard_ as he can as soon as possible.

 

“ _Zayn,”_ He gasps, holding the side of Zayn’s neck as his grinded into with Zayn’s hand rubbing down his shorts.

 

“ _Tell me what you want baby,”_

 

_“Take it, now. Please I want you to take it,”_

 

Zayn nods as he kisses him, pulling Liam’s pants off with one swift movement and beginning to climb out of his own, lifting Liam’s leg next to him.

 

_“I don’t wanna… hurt you-”_

 

_“You won’t.”_

 

All Liam can think right now is that he wants Zayn to take his virginity again. The other one. The only one he’s ever wanted to be Zayn’s.

 

Before he even has a chance to touch him, a steel bat swings up into Liam’s guts as Louis pops up in his brain.

 

Louis and Zayn together doing things he’d rather pluck his eyes out than have to watch but it’s all he can see now as Zayn’s tongue moves against his and it almost makes him sick. And it’s _so_ vivid. He can see everything they’ve ever done for the last 3 years. Louis wasn’t lying. They didn’t actually have that much sex. Mostly… slow tongue kissing like this. And in between the legs. But it’s still so much worst than watching Zayn have sex with someone else somehow. Cause it feels like Louis is in bed with them right now. He feels like Louis is _kissing_ him right now.

 

And he sees Olly… and Niall… and Tyler and Andy and _Stan,_ which actually makes Liam turn his head to the side and gag a little as he gasps when Zayn rubs down his length cause this has turned into a really fucked up orgy of pure torture of epic proportions, all kinds of boys doing phallic things with Zayn.

 

He doesn’t know how to use his clairvoyance properly enough to make it stop, seeing things he’s never seen before through someone else’s eyes. Seeing people that made Liam feel like a walking dead body most of his life with Zayn all at once, people that think horrible things about Zayn, overwhelming him. It goes without saying that it turns the mood off completely. Zayn stops as he lifts up to look at him briefly, looking down in between their bodies and back at Liam with raised eyebrows.

 

“Wow… ” He murmurs a little.

 

“I haven’t really done this in a really long time so,”

 

Liam cringes inwardly, covering his face. He’s not embarrassed about being flaccid now. He’s cringing at all the influx of images he’s being bombarded with of what’s happened in Zayn's past, still flashing past his eyes the longer he stays this close to Zayn.

 

He pushes Zayn off him and sits up with a headache, pulling his pants back up. When he’s not touching him anymore, the flashbacks stop. But the memory of it is burning in his skull now, Zayn’s memories suddenly becoming Liam’s. He scoots to the side of the bed a swing his legs off over, holding his throbbing head. That throb that signals an influx of tears about to crash through you and the ache in your chest that tells you it’s gonna be really ugly. His emotion is running far too fucking high right now. He feels like he’s about to explode. He has to get out. Not out of his body. Out of this room.

 

“Liam,” Zayn sits up with quickly worry all in his tone and face.

 

Even Lux seems concerned when he looks back at him from the window in the mirror.

 

“Don’t be embarrassed we don’t have to-”

 

Zayn’s hand brushes against Liam’s arm and Liam just automatically flinches. He doesn’t mean to pull away from him so obviously but he can’t be close to him right now or see that shit again. He needs to get away for a moment so this won’t eat him up inside any longer. Go scream into an abyss. Maybe purge his own damn unwanted emotions into hell. Zayn did it, why can’t he?

 

He stands up abruptly, avoiding Zayn’s confused expression.

 

“I have to pee.” He blurts at the door. It’s not a total lie. He needed to be anywhere but in this room. Zayn looks at him carefully with knitted brows.

 

“Across the hall…” He says slowly. Liam nods and leaves the room before Zayn can even finish telling him where this alleged hallway is.

 

He walks around aimlessly, tripping over himself as his head pounds hard, following his gut to where he needs to go. This house is pretty big. The first room he stumbles into turns out to be even better than a bathroom. It’s Harry’s room like he wanted. He’s sitting up on the window sill, looking outside in amazement. When Liam walks in, he smiles.

 

“Bro have you actually seen this storm? It’s _wicked!”_

 

“Harry,” Liam gasps, sliding down the door after he closes it so he’s crouching on the floor. Harry’s smile wipes away then, hopping off the window sill to come over to Liam.

 

“What’s wrong? What happened?” He asked quickly. Liam shakes his head.

 

“I said I didn’t care but I _can’t-”_ He hiccups as his throat swells, feeling his eyes burning and hot clouds replacing his sight again. Harry sits in front of Liam, cross legged and patient.

 

“Li, slow down. You thought didn’t care about what? What’s going on?”

 

“ _I saw him,”_ he mumbles, annoyed with his tears as he wipes them away.

 

“I saw him and I can’t get it out of my fucking _head_ now!”

 

“What do you mean you saw him?”

 

“I can’t control my stupid powers. My sight just shows me whatever the fuck it wants when I get close to him and I start seeing everything he’s done. It plays in front of my eyes like a movie reel. I _saw_ him Harry. I heard his voice again and I told myself I didn’t care but I fucking DO! I think about him all the time. My entire fucking life revolves around him and I HATE IT!” Liam squeezes his eyes closed.

 

“Liam of course you care. It’s _Zayn.”_ Harry sighs.

 

“No… that’s not Zayn. Why would he… _do this to me?_ He doesn’t care about me, why is he pretending like he cares? He almost let me DIE-”

 

Liam doesn’t even know why he’s rehashing this. He’s not supposed to care.

 

“You wanna... split up?” Harry asks cautiously, growing more concerned with Liam’s current state of distress. He’s never seen him like this before. Like… he’s panicking and he’s about to have a heart attack.

 

“What?” Liam frowns in confusion, shaking his head as he covers his face.

 

“I mean…he had nothing to do with me and I just want to know WHY,”

 

Harry tilts his head sideways, biting his bottom lip.

 

“Why he’s making you leave?”

 

“No! Why did he LEAVE me? Why does he even like me? He’s never even seen my face before! Why does he want me now? He never looks at me. I begged him to look at me and it was like I was born invisible or something,”

 

Liam stands up, rubbing his hands down his hair and down his face as all his insecurities he tries to keep buried decide to finally surface all at once, making him want to just disassociate from all of this and leave it behind forever. But his body won’t let him. He’s stuck and everything he’s ever left in his body in backing him into a tight corner and squeezing the life out of him. He has to release it. He’ll die if he keeps it in any longer.

 

“I hate him!” He blurts as his voice is rising now.

 

Harry doesn’t even know what the hell Liam is talking about right now as nothing he’s saying is coherent. He might be having a breakdown. He stays quiet, letting Liam hash out everything he’s feeling.

 

“He fucking LEFT ME. I tried so hard to love him and he left me. I was suffocating without my fucking inhaler. I couldn’t breathe and he just walk right past me like I wasn’t there on the couch dying and he left and I never fucking saw him again! He can’t just show up in my life like he’s always been there and take me away when he’s NEVER been there he never fucking cared about me, he wouldn’t even LOOK at me! He hated me so much Harry I hate him, I can’t go back there. I see him everywhere! Whenever I see his OLD _ugly_ face, I feel like… I… can’t _breathe-”_ Liam gasps sharply before he starts sobbing really hard.

 

Harry mouth falls open as he slowly realizes what’s happening. He’s never heard Liam talk about Geoff in his entire life. He doesn’t even know what to do as he watches his best friend choking on his tears and crying his broken heart out.

 

This was the nightmare from hell he never could’ve imagined happening to him. Ever seeing his dad again. It doesn’t matter to Liam if he stays here or goes home. It’s all hell. His life has always been hell. Disassociating will never make-up for any of it. It never has. No matter how much therapy they shove him in or how many drugs they tell him to take nothing will ever make-up for what’s happened to him inside.

 

“Harry I can’t go back there, I can’t see him again, I’ll suffocate. I ALWAYS suffocated, he fucking gave me asthma and it took the life right out of me so I couldn’t even breathe. Why would he want me? He didn’t even like me. He fucking hated me! He never even LOOKED at me, not once in my life! I don’t even remember what colour his eyes are, I can’t go back there!”

 

Harry crouches down with Liam as he hiccups and cries, soaking through Harry’s shirt as he holds onto Harry. And he cries and he cries and he’s never cried so hard in his life, unable to stop gasping out that he hates him over and over. He was always shoving it away and burying the emotion somewhere else. But now he finally lets it all out while Harry holds him together cause he feels like everything inside him is shaking apart.

 

_“I know Liam… it’s okay. You don’t have to see him again, it’s okay.”_

 

_“I’ll die if I go back there. I’d rather die. I’ll suffocate if I see him. I feel dead without him, why did he… leave me,”_

 

Harry doesn’t say anything, letting it flow out in a flood of emotion that Liam’s held in for far too long. He doesn’t know how long they stay on the floor like this. Maybe an hour. Maybe 2. Maybe an entire year. Time doesn’t even feel real right now. It feels like he’s trying to purge 17 years worth of pent up anxiety and grief at once. Cause that’s how long it’ll take him to get over Geoff. And Zayn. He probably never will. It’ll always be the dark space inside him, like a black hole that no amount of time will ever be able to fill again.

 

After his eyes are almost swollen shut and drained of tears, he finally stops as he wears himself out, exhausting his body. He and Harry sit up against the wall, looking at the storm outside.

 

“Why am I so fucked up Haz?” He sniffs.

 

“Cause we were born into a fucked up world.” Harry shakes his head.

 

“We were born in hell.”

 

His eyes zone all the way out as he looks at the storm he never knew he lived on top of, seeing the land spreading out for miles, feeling the thunder rumbling in him. It’s thundering but it won’t rain. Liam wonders why it won’t just rain. Maybe if it did, all this fire and hell would go away. But… it just keeps thundering, burning up all around them.

 

“I feel like hell. I wanna just keep crying but it… won’t change anything. I could cry until my heart gives out and it won’t change a goddamn thing.” His tears smolder as they fall, burning down his face without the fire.

 

“I’ve been so afraid to cry and so afraid to see him and so fucking scared of losing Zayn and all of it is drying up in me and happening all at once and I can’t stop it. It rains in Manningtree all the time and all this hell is suddenly right underneath it.”

 

“Manningtree was always hell Li. We just didn’t know it.”

 

Maybe they did. But they were always so into each other so they didn’t notice how warped everything was. They didn’t even notice their whole world was set on fire and now it’s tearing them apart.

 

After a long silence, Liam starts to remember he just had a near mental meltdown in the middle of a very emotionally intense, almost goodbye-sex and it’s been a really long time since and Zayn is probably thinking this is one massive shit Liam must be taking, wondering what the fuck happened.

 

He doesn’t even know what happened. He’s had a lot on his mind that he’s been constantly shoving into corners until there wasn’t any room left and it just backfire and crumbled on top of each other. Zayn and Geoff and seeing Geoff’s face on Lux and death and sex feeling like the same thing right now and his own flaws and demons and the pressure just finally exploded in his mind.

 

“Liam you don’t have to go back there.” Harry assures him, breaking him out of his thoughts.

 

“Z isn’t letting me stay here and neither is Luxie. He doesn’t think I can trust him.”

 

Harry ignores the fact that he just said ‘Luxie’.

 

“Not because he doesn’t want you. He just doesn’t want something like what happened with Avaritia to happen again.”

 

Liam shakes his head tiredly. His body feels like 10 trains just ran through him. Maybe a few crashed and are still stuck on the tracks, clogging up in his heart that’s been strangled so many times, he doesn’t even know how it’s still beating at this point.

 

“Doesn’t matter. I mean get that. But he’s still gonna be stuck running around, chasing demons in hell and I’m never gonna see him again cause he’ll never be free and I don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna do. I can’t see Geoff. I can’t go home.”

 

That’s the first time he’s ever said his name out loud.

 

“I’m not going back either.”

 

Liam looks at Harry next to him

 

“You’re not?”

 

Harry shrugs a little.

 

“I texted Ben and Anthony. I called Mikey and gave him the code to my safe to give them some more money. They’re in a motel. I’m skipping town with them in a few days after we buy a better car.” He sighs as he looks at Liam.

 

“It’s a cursed town. I don’t think I can ever go back to living there again… And I sort of promised Lux that Mikey would be as far away from him as possible or his soul would be on his hitlist next.”

 

Liam snorts a little.

 

“This Lux-Zayn stuff is so weird I swear I’m never looking at another mirror ever again.”

 

Harry nods in agreement. Liam doesn’t even know the literal half of how weird it truly is. About what he even really is himself and why he can leave his body whenever he wants. About what Lux really is. About any of this.

 

“I can’t believe he’s… dying for me.”

 

“He’s not dying for you Liam. It sounds like he’s wanted to get out of hell for a while.”

 

“Yeah but wanting to escape hell and DYING are two totally different things. He’ll be stuck in a glass again. He’s gonna be trapped too. He was free with Zayn’s body. He didn’t have to come back here at all.”

 

Harry looks over at him slowly.

 

“Liam… you’re not-”

 

“No.” He says before Harry can even finish.

 

“Well… he does look and act like Zayn and that can be confusing... I was just making sure you’re-”

 

“I’m not.”

 

Harry shakes his head as he looks out the window again. Liam totally is. When he gets attached to something… he gets attached with every fiber of his being. And he’s attached to every part of Zayn. That includes his reflection. He’s a part of Zayn afterall. He supposes it doesn’t really matter. Cause Lux won’t even exist anymore in less than 2 weeks so whatever feelings Liam has obviously developed for him will have no choice but to perish with his evil gut.

 

“I’ve been thinking about disappearing and getting out of town for a while now anyways. Especially after Ni left. Even more so when Ben and Anthony actually tried to. We’ve always said we would travel the world right? Now we actually can. We have loads of money.” Harry changes the subject to something useful.

 

“You think Niall knows he’s a demon yet?” Liam snorts.

 

“I’m calling him tomorrow too. Maybe Ireland can be our first stop.”

 

“What about our mums?”

 

“They can go too. What the hell right? Let’s pack up the whole damn town and go.” Harry shrugs simply before he nudges Liam’s shoulder.

 

“Everything isn’t hell Liam. You don’t have to stay here to avoid Geoff. And you’re not gonna disappear into a void or fucking die. I know it’s _hard_ to leave Zayn here. But you don’t have to leave now. I mean, the portal will be there for the next 12 days. Maybe we can like, visit everyday until then. I probably won’t actually leave town until I have everything sorted but, you should still come. Tony and Ben wanna see you too… even if Tony won’t admit it, they’re your friends. I know you don’t believe it but, there’s still people on the surface that care about your life.”

 

Liam continues to stare out the window, listening to everything Harry says.

 

That hell storm out there was life. Even as he’s sitting in the eye where nothing moves, he knows If he keeps sitting still like this, he’ll never get anywhere. And running away wasn’t gonna change anything cause it’s just gonna keep following them wherever they go.

 

“He’s got so much crap he’s doing I’ll just get in the way of it.” Liam is more trying to convince himself to leave now even though he doesn’t really believe that. His feet feel firmly planted on the ground like he’s grown roots in this house already.

 

Harry stands up, clasping their hands together and pulling Liam to his feet now that all evidence of Liam’s eyes swelling up from violently sobbing has gone away.

 

“I’ll tell you what. Go talk to your guy without fighting each other. Then fuck his brains out. Put your back into it. Leave a mark on it. The whole thing.” Harry smiles as he back slaps Liam’s chest lightly.

 

“Shut up Harry.” Liam shakes his head as he rubs behind his hair on his neck, looking at the ground.

 

“Let him spank you or whatever the fuck it is you’re into.”

 

Liam cover his ears as Harry laughs.

 

“Please…God Haz!”

 

“We’ll go back to town tomorrow and you can see how he feels about us come back here at least once a day until Halloween. After Halloween… it’s the road from there.”

 

That would be once a month for Zayn if they come back everyday. Halloween is in 12 days. Making the time stretching out to be…

 

“A year in hell.” Or something like that.

 

“Sounds fun.” Harry nods. He turns Liam around by the shoulders, pushing him towards the door.

 

“Talk to Zayn. Work out your shit. You don’t have to tell him about Geoff.”

 

“Who?” Liam already wiped his mind clean of any notion of that after getting a fat chunk of it out of his system finally. Harry shakes his head.

 

“No one.” He sighs and that’s the last remnants of Voldemort.

 

When Liam leaves Harry’s room, he heads through the hall back in the living room back towards Zayn’s room but he stops mid-walk to look at the ceiling.

 

He’s not sure where the marsh is exactly up there cause it’s just a rock ceiling but he’s pretty sure he’s standing right below it right now. He can feel it close by.

 

“It’s over there.”

 

Liam looks back down at the couch where Zayn is laying across, pointing a little ways over Liam’s head where he’s standing about 3 feet away from where the marsh is. Right at the center of the ceiling.

 

Zayn sits up.

 

“Tony tried to put a tarp over it earlier but, it just spit it back out.” He sighs.

 

“Z, I’m sorry I like... spazzed like that,” Liam starts to apologize for his freakish behaviour but Zayn stands up and pulls the cushions out of the couch, tossing them right under the marsh on the ground and reaching his hand out for Liam to take as he brings them to it.

 

“I mean, the tension was pretty fucking thick it’s okay.” He sighs as they lie on the cushions.

 

“I wanna show you something.”

 

Liam snorts a little at those infamous words.

 

Zayn lifts his hands up above him for a moment and slowly moves them apart like he’s opening a curtain. As he does so, the ceiling gradually begins to pull apart with his hands, parting the rock solid roof that turns out to be not solid afterall until it’s a perfect circle of water above them, wide open to the world they’re underneath. He can see that it’s still daylight on the other side but the water moving around like jello makes it hard to distinguish anything but the blurb of trees and the sun.

 

“Wow…” Liam marvels at the reflection dancing across his eyes and the water ripples above, swirling around in a continuous circle.

 

Zayn squeezes his fists up tight and the surface instantly stills like how it does from above. Only it’s not a mirror on this side. It’s like crystal clear, transparent glass. The hole is open wide. It doesn’t even look like water. It’s so still, it looks like a big hole in the roof now. Sunlight pours in, leaving the shadows from the trees moving in the wind up them over them, planting warm kisses on both their faces where the light touches.   

 

It’s such a juxtaposition to the double panelled window at the wall on their right. Cause Liam knows behind the curtain out there, it’s storming and hell. But up above, it’s fluffy clouds and heaven. Liam wouldn’t mind sitting here in the sun all day long. But, he can’t just sit here. No sitting still without getting anywhere. No more endless circles. There are too many things that need to get sorted for him to just sunbathe and avoid talking about this.

 

He looks over at Zayn, looking at the sky. His eyes are hazel again.

 

“I have to... ask you something,”

 

He shakes his head.

 

“No.”

 

Liam frowns a little.

 

“No?”

 

“No you and Harry aren’t coming back to visit everyday.”

 

Liam’s face drains.

 

“You… followed me?”

 

“Room’s right behind mine. The walls are pretty thin.”

 

Liam closes his eyes, shaking his head slowly.

 

“Zayn tha- that’s _not_ what I was gonna ask you,”

 

His hand holds Liam’s between them.

 

“Yeah? Well I’m telling you now anyways.”

 

Liam looks at him again, seeing the hard look in his eye as he leans close.

 

“You can see _Harry_ when he comes to visit us.”

 

The words take a few seconds to catch up with the gears as Liam’s mind goes blank.

 

“Wait…” Liam blinks.

 

“You’re letting me-”

 

“Fuck my brains out in hell instead of running away, head-first into oblivion up there? Maybe. It depends.”

 

Liam’s entire face lights up with his huge grin as he pounces on top of Zayn, sitting on his lap as he’s laid on the floor.

 

“ARE YOU SERIOUS?” He laughs, holding Zayn’s wrists up with him, shaking his hands back and forth excitedly. Zayn squints one eye up at him with a half-smile, like he’s being blinded by the sun.

 

“Calm your knickers sunshine, I said it _depends.”_

 

Liam stops shaking his hands then. Zayn’s never called him than before. When he notices Lux there too underneath him, his smile falls a little before he starts to climb off but, he stops him, holding Liam’s hips still.

 

“Oh no you don’t, you don’t start things without finishing them in my house.” He smiles. The way the grey sprinkles through the brown gives them the illusion of looking like one whole person to the naked eye. But if Liam looks at him from the other side of himself, he can see Lux just in front of Zayn. They’re close, but not quite in that first medium. Lux is in control right now and Zayn probably can’t see anything.

 

“Depends on what?” Liam carefully takes his hands off his hips and folds them over his chest precisely, holding them still, making sure they stay there and not on Liam.

 

“Zayn and I came to an agreement." Lux starts.

 

"I don't think it's safe enough here for you to be alone in this house without us but, Zayn thinks it'll be easier to protect you here than in another world. He didn't realise your-"

 

"I get it." Liam stops him firmly.

 

"You don't actually want me here. You heard me crying like a little girl about the big bad monster on the surface and you're letting me stay out of pity."

 

Liam shakes his head.

 

"I don't want your pity."

 

Lux's expression is completely impressed by Liam.

 

"Did I _say_ that?" He asks calmly.

 

"You don't _have_ to say it." Liam says sharply.

 

Lux's eyes stay relaxed but his jaw hardens. Suddenly, he flips Liam on his back and puts his entire fist through his gut. Not punching him. Actually _inside_  his stomach, right through he body like he's made of water like the sins in the Acheron river did. Liam gasps sharply when Lux's hand wraps around his pit and holds onto it tightly, like he's getting ready to rip it out. It doesn't hurt. But it feels like it will if he moves it even a little. As his eyes turn black, Liam fears he just might.

 

He leans down slowly as Liam breath comes out in slow chunks.  
  
  
****

**"Well since you're suddenly a mind reader, can you tell me if I'm about to kill you or not?"**

 

"Lux," Liam gasps when he squeezes around it.

 

"Please, don't-" He begs.

 

Lux's face crumbles as he closes his eyes and shakes his head, letting go carefully and taking his hand out of Liam, groaning as he rubs his eyes briefly. When he opens them again his eyes have dialled back down to normal, leaning over Liam seriously.

 

"I'm letting you stay here because we want you to be in the safest place possible. And I've decided this is. You want me to kick you out, I'll fucking give you what you want. But don't put words in my mouth. Cause I don't pity you. I like you... a lot. Do you understand?"

 

Liam nods slowly.

 

"If you want to survive here, you can't just TALK to me or my brothers any kind of fucking way you feel like or throw tantrums. Because we are DEMONS. I don't want to hurt you but this pit in my chest doesn't give a fuck about you or what I want. So either save the smartass comments for your boyfriend or shut the FUCK up the next time you feel the urge to get buff with me. Because I will do something I'd really HATE to do. _Intellegis?_ " He says sternly. Liam doesn't have to be told that last word means if he understands. So he nods again.

 

Lux stays on top of him for a beat as they just stare at each other. Liam breaks the silence before something else happens.

 

"You said it depends. Depends on what?"

 

"I'm gonna teach you how to control your power but only by one condition." Lux smiles now, leaning down to his ear to whisper. Liam blinks up at the marsh as he listens before he blushes with his mouth wide open, shaking his head when Lux looks down on him again.

 

"I- I don't know-"

 

"I mean... you don't have too. I know plenty of others-"

 

"No!" Liam says quickly before closing his eyes.

 

"I mean... I don't know... Zayn said-"

 

"I know what he said. But that's not what I asked you."

 

Liam sighs as he looks at the marsh, biting his lip.

 

"...everyday?"

 

"Everyday." Lux nods. When Liam still seems conflicted, he starts to climb off.

 

"That's my only requirement right now so you think about it and decide tonight. Cause it starts again tomorrow." Lux collapses next to him as he's nodding.

 

"Okay."

 

"Okay what?"

 

Liam looks at him again. His eyes are still hazel, but Lux isn't in front anymore.

 

"He told you?"

 

Liam nods so he does too.

  
"Okay good. Cause you're not going to the fucking the West Midlands. And you're not losing me, yeah? Before I close the marsh and break the curse, you go back with Harry wherever he’s going and I'll be there too a little later. You just have to wait a bit until I find you again. It won't be a thousand years, I promise you it won't be that long."

 

Liam doesn't nod or say anything, looking back up at the hole above them in silence as he's thinking about what Lux asked him.

 

"Promise me you'll wait for me after this is over."

 

Liam nods a little distractedly.

 

"Lima?"

 

His head turns towards Zayn.

 

"Of course I'll wait for you. I'd do anything for you, remember?”

 

Zayn snickers a little as they look through the marsh.

 

“How will I know when you come back?”

 

“Do you remember where we met?” Zayn asks as he looks over at Liam.

 

Liam’s eyes rolls upwards.

 

“Umm……no.” he shakes his head, which makes Zayn laugh a little.

 

Neither of them can ever remember where they first saw each other. It always seemed like they knew each other already. There was no beginning. Cause love has no boundaries and many of us experience this. If you’ve ever had the feeling you’ve already met someone before after looking into their eyes, chances are you really have. You might already know each other. Your souls might have known each other for a long time. Even if Zayn and Liam were perfect opposites all their lives, they’ve always been together. Even before they met.

 

“Whenever I look out of this hole and see this beautiful view with all this light shining into my dark hole, it reminds me of someone I met like a _billion_ years ago.” He sighs as he pulls Liam into him. Liam smiles, tucking himself under Zayn as they watch the clouds float by.

 

“He was shining so fucking bright, I couldn’t even see where I was anymore, so I don’t know where we were when I first laid eyes on him either. But I saw him first and he looked like he might’ve fell right out of the sky and blinded everyone with this beautiful, bright smile that made my heart feel lighter in my chest cause he already had it and I knew I was in love with him.”

 

“I’m pretty sure he saw you first.”

 

Zayn shakes his head.

 

“No… you didn’t know you were blind until you were 6 so, I literally saw you first.” Zayn shrugs.

 

“I wasn’t blind!” Liam laughs, nudging his knuckle in the side of Zayn’s bare stomach, making him laugh too.

 

“My eyes weren’t fully formed cause I was born premature, _asshole_. They were just… weak. Anything even remotely bright, felt like it blinded me. I was ALMOST blind. That’s why my glasses got dark in the sun. I needed glasses AND sunglasses.”

 

Zayn nods.

 

“I know. But your retinopathy of prematurity isn’t why your eyes are so sensitive babe.”

 

Liam chuckles at the fact that Zayn has always known what his legal blindness was called and not him.

 

“You were born soft. Your eyes are gentle and delicate, cause you were so used to bathing in clouds with angels when you got down here, the world was too cruel to you. You’ve always been softer than sunlight and carrying a piece of light from a rosey star in you. That’s how I know I saw you first.”

 

Zayn traces over his brows with his index finger.

 

_“You still are.”_

 

Liam closes his eyes, inhaling the smell of Zayn into him.

 

 _“I still am what?”_ He exhales.

 

_“You’re still my favourite star.”_

 

When he kisses him, florets bloom all over his skin in goosebumps and Liam doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to this feeling. Getting lost in Zayn’s touch no matter how many times he kisses him. Feeling like Zayn is tattooing his flavour on Liam so he really does carry it with him permanently. His floral smell and sweet taste becoming Liam’s, holding onto him so he doesn’t leave him, forgetting where they are like always.

 

Liam opens his eyes again as they look at each other side by side. His eyes are all brown again, warm like he’s right at home, safely where he’s supposed to be. A shadow moves across Zayn’s face from above them. When Liam squints up at the marsh again, there’s someone swimming around in it as their dark silhouette blocks out the sun.

 

“Is that him?” Liam asks as he looks back at Zayn, who nods.

 

Lux stops in the middle, arms crossed behind his head and floating on his back like he always does, looking at the sky over his head.

 

“This is all so strange.” Liam chuckles a little as his head shakes, looking at his hand over the tattooed lip stain on the centre of Zayn’s chest.

 

“It doesn’t even feel real.”

 

“I know.” Zayn sighs.

 

“But at least this does.”

 

They lay quietly for a while, watching Lux watch the sun.

 

“I still liked you first.” Zayn says out of nowhere. Liam shakes his head as he smiles.

 

“Still wrong.”

 

“I’m never wrong.”

 

“You’re ALWAYS wrong.”

 

“You fucking said you didn’t know until you were 13!”

 

“ _Wrong_.” Liam looks at him.

 

“I was only 13 when I realised I wanted you to _kiss_ me. But… I sort of ignored it like I always do but not really cause every time I saw something pink, I’d think about your lips on me.”

 

Zayn shakes his head, brushing his fingers through Liam’s hair as he lays in Zayn’s arm.

 

“So you _lied_ to me.” He tuts. Liam shrugs as he looks far out of the hole, feeling like he’s looking at specs of dust out in space itself from how far he can see. Star dust of his past still floating out there somewhere above this marsh he’s in. Zayn looks at his eyes glazing over.

 

“Lied to myself more than anything else.” Liam murmurs.

 

“But since puberty took it’s sweet-ass time, it got kind of harder to lie. Cause my body was reacting to yours and after my balls dropped when I was 14 and awkward boners started springing out of thin air, I knew I was lying to myself.”

 

Zayn’s knit a little as he watches Liam, glancing above them briefly at the hole, past Lux, wondering what he’s looking at.

 

“Lying about what?” Zayn says into his cheek, planting a little kiss there that wakes Liam up as he looks at Zayn again.

 

“That the way I felt when you touched or looked at someone else wasn’t jealousy or the way I felt when you touched and looked at _me_ was nothing more than platonic.”

 

Liam’s fingers run up Zayn’s arm, pulling his wrist up to lay around his neck as he turns on his side, resting his arms on the sides of Zayn’s hips as he pulls him in.

 

“Whenever we’d be wrestling and you’d pin me down on my belly and hem my arms up behind my back with you sitting on top of me, that’s when I realised-”

 

“You were gay?” Zayn finishes for him, and Liam bursts out laughing as his head falls against Zayn’s, feeling him laughing against him too.

 

“ _That I wanted you to fuck me.”_ Liam whispers against his ear. Zayn shrugs.

 

_“Same thing.”_

 

 _“With handcuffs and a choker around my neck and and tied up to my bed and me pulling your hair out,”_ Liam continues and Zayn’s eyes bulge as he pulls back to look at him.

 

“ _Oh my god Liam!”_ His mouth breaks into a wide open, shocked grin in disbelief.

 

“Yes those are my words, not the demon in me.” Liam laughs at Zayn’s face as he blushes hard.

 

 _“You were thinking this at fucking 14 years old??”_ He practically shrieks as he shakes his head.

 

“You’re supposed to be my innocent, darling angel what in the hell,”

 

Liam can barely contain himself as he laughs, shaking his head.

 

“No…not really,” he laughs as Zayn blushes too.

 

“I had this fantasy of us losing our virginity together sometime in the future… when we were older.” He sighs, looking at the hole again.

 

“But… then you lost yours already, with that sleazy older guy that I hated even though I never even seen him. So I pretended he didn’t exist. But then you and Louis started hanging out more and blah blah blah…. I just didn’t want to lose it at all anymore after that. I thought it was dumb of me to even think about something so cheesy and it became this embarrassing thought, thinking you’d ever do that with me so I just shoved anything sex related out of my mind after. The whole bondage, sadomasochism thing didn’t come into fruition until after you showed me how to give a blowjob when we started face fucking 17 times a day.” Liam snorts when he uses Zayn’s words.

 

Zayn doesn’t, watching Lux above him as Liam’s confession take him back to a really… awful point in his life.

 

“I wish you’d known how much I regretted that.” He sighs.

 

“You did?” Liam’s brow raise.

 

“I went to a party with our friends and got really pissed. I couldn’t even remember anything from that night except this vague memory of having unprotected sex with some equally drunk Uni kid I didn’t even know. He could barely even get it up, he was so drunk but… it still hurt like HELL and it was the worst thing I had ever did. I never wanted to have sex again. And I had to go get tested and every fucking person in town knew about it and I wanted to die every time I looked at myself... but that was a normal feeling anyways.”  

 

That reminds Liam of what he wanted to ask Zayn before Lux said he could stay.

 

“Can I… ask you something about that? If it’s too personal, I’d more then understand-”

 

“Go on.” Zayn smiles a little.

 

“How does it… _work?_ The curse?”

 

“I can see you Liam, you're gorgeous.”

 

“No,” Liam shakes his head. “Not like that I mean, when you see yourself and you can’t look away. You've always known about it?”

 

“Yeah… I sort of have.” Zayn sighs a little, looking at Lux above him while Liam watches him.

 

“Remember when I told you I sort of… forget who I am when I not looking at myself?” He says. Liam nods.

 

There’s a small pause.

 

“It always felt like... part of me was missing or something if I couldn't see myself. Like I'm not really a whole person. It would just bother me cause I'm sitting around trying to figure who I am if I don't know. But it seems like everyone sees me and they already know who I am before I do. Cause I feel like I don’t know at all… until I see myself again. Different versions of myself in their eyes. And this person I see… sometimes someone looks at me and they see this brown kid. Then I remember, oh yeah, that’s me in their eyes right there, I’m that brown muslim kid. My parents look at me and they see this _kafir._ This disobedient fuck who is doomed by God cause he does drugs and drinks and likes dick. So then that’s me too. Then someone sees a paki. And then I remember that’s me too. Someone sees a cocksucking faggot, I see it too, that’s me in their eyes right there. This rude little shit who’s gonna be on his knees eventually… that’s me. This drunk asshole. This guy everyone knows, that’s me walking around with my eyes attached to my reflection cause if they’re not, something in me is missing that I have too look at. Or I’ll be nothing. Whatever I see in their eyes, suddenly, I remember... _that’s_ who I am. So I act like who I am cause what else do I do? And I hate his fucking guts every time I see him but I have to look at him because _that’s me and I’m stuck like this_. I’m stuck like this forever even if I don’t wanna live forever. In this fucked up empty shell for fucking ever but it doesn’t matter. All I can do is be me cause this is how I was born. That person in my reflection is me. That’s who I fucking am. I can’t change shit cause that’s my God damned curse. I have to look at that asshole forever and I wish he could die but he’ll never die. He’s gonna keep following me around.”

 

Zayn holds Liam against him as he stares up at the sun, letting him tuck himself under Zayn’s arm, his red nose pushed up on Zayn’s chest.

 

“I guess the only person I ever told that to was Jade.” He sniffs a little, shaking his head as he looks at Liam with a small smile.

 

“But… none of that shit matters. Cause I have this beacon of light I've always looked to whenever the world around me looks so ugly. Whenever I looked at you, I didn’t feel like I was stuck staring at something I hate. It was always love. And it’s always so easy with you… cause you knew who I was from the start, even if you couldn’t really see me.”

 

 _“I could see you Z.”_ Liam assures him.

 

_“Beautiful angels pulled apart at birth. Limbless and helpless, I couldn’t even recognise you.”_

 

“Are those Radiohead lyrics?” Zayn laughs. Liam shrugs.

 

“Better than High Tide lyrics innit?” He kisses him then.

 

“How about Tame Impala?” Harry’s voice sounds across the room.

 

Liam and Zayn both crane their necks to look over at the hall threshold.

 

“Hazza,” Zayn smiles warmly as Harry stands there sheepishly with bare feet and boxers.

 

“Sorry, it’s hard to fall asleep with all the thunderin’,” He gestures around him vaguely.

 

“Get in here mate, there’s enough love to go around. Let’s have a snuggle.” Zayn pats in between he and Liam as Liam scoots over to make room for Harry, who eagerly hops between them. The three of them haven’t been together in harmony like this in so long. Harry was always happy when they’d invite him into the loop.

 

Harry slots in perfectly, laying his head on Liam’s shoulder and his long hairy legs draped over Zayn’s as the all bask in the marshes enchantment.

 

“You guys weren’t gonna fuck or anything right?”

 

Liam elbows Harry in his side while Zayn laughs.

 

"We've got time." 

 

“I’m sure you’d love to watch.” Liam jibes.

 

“I wouldn’t go _that_ far-”

 

“Course not. You and Z have already made it past dick base right Hazza?” Louis chirps from up above as he dives over the 3 of them.

 

“LOUIS!” They all groan when he falls on their stomachs, laughing when Liam kicks him off.

 

“I’m sorry boys, you didn’t think you were having a threesome without me did you?” His head lies on Zayn’s stomach while the rest is on Harry.

 

“How about we do _nothing_ with you?” Liam shoves his feet away from him. Louis sits up.

 

“Sorry Bean but I’m not gonna be doing a whole lot of nothing once you finally get the fuck out.”

 

“Well that’s a really hilarious of you to say cause I’m not going anywhere.” Liam smiles sweetly.

 

“I’ll remember that when the door closes on your way out.”

 

“He’s staying.” Zayn says below Louis. Harry and Louis both look at him.

 

“What?!?” They both chirp in surprise.

 

“Liam. Is. Staying.” Zayn smiles as he sits up on his elbows.

 

“With me.”

 

“But…” Louis’ face goes dumb.

 

“But Lux said-”

 

“This isn’t Lux’s house.” Zayn cuts him off, throwing his arm over Louis’ shoulder.

 

“It’s my house. So you can either get along with your new flatmate, or burn in hell outside.” Louis shrugs Zayn off his shoulder with a grimace. Zayn pushes him off completely.

 

"Where's Lux? He likes it when I sit on his lap-"

 

"I'm right here." He smiles, "Apologise _now_."

 

Harry watches the 3 of them... or 4... together as Lux makes Louis apologise with a worried, wrinkled head. Liam staying here was not a good thing. Liam staying meant he was gonna be exposed to more of Zayn's demons and spending a fucking LOT of alone time with Lux. Nothing good could come from this.

 

“How long’s he gonna be here?”

 

“As long as he fucking wants to.” Harry says in Liam’s defence. Even though he doesn't want Liam to fall for a seductress, he's kind of glad Louis is gonna be pushed aside finally. He and Louis both start bickering between Liam and Zayn, who both lay back down, smiling at each other with Zayn crossing his eyes at Liam.

 

“How did we get to this place?” Liam sigh quietly so only Zayn hears. His thumb rubs over Liam’s hand below them where they’ve managed to reach each other through Louis and Harry arguing in the middle.

 

“I dunno but we’ll just have to enjoy each moment while we’re here together… even with annoying aliens and ghosts running around us.” Zayn flicks Harry’s side with his mind, making him twitch to the side as he looks around in confusion. Liam and Zayn both laugh.

 

After a few hours go by, long after Harry and Louis have exhausted themselves into sleep, curling into each other like kittens peacefully finally, Liam and Zayn lay awake still. Zayn’s eyes are heavy and full of sleep though. And so are Liam’s. But they’ve got plenty of time to sleep later.

 

“I don’t really think I’m a whole person either. Not really.” Liam admits as his eyes bat slowly.

 

“I don’t think I’ve ever been. Parts of me feels like they died in the world I grew up in. I visit some in dreams like old memories but others go unvisited.”

 

Zayn snorts lightly as his lashes falls steadily over his hazel eyes.

 

“ _You’re a walking elegy.”_ He murmurs sleepily. Liam doesn’t even feel the energy to ask what that means, going on with his drunken rambling.

 

“The part of me that holds onto Geoff… I try to keep it out cause it hurts too much to hold it too close in me. Like a sore throat.”

 

Zayn holds his lips in tightly as he listens.

 

“The part of me that holds you feels even closer. Cause it’s my entire heart. And even though I’ve always known you, it feels like I’ve never been able to hold you for only but a few short moments tossed around.” He gestures to the two boys separating them.

 

“I don’t think I’ll ever truly be able to let go of you, even if it’s for just a few years. Cause it feels like I just got you. And you’ll always have my entire heart Zaynie. And I’m always gonna cherish having yours.”

 

 _“Always?”_ Zayn smiles. Liam nods.

 

_“Even if I’m a fucking mess and stuck in hell with my demons?”_

 

“Your fucking mess and demons too. They look good with mine.”

 

Zayn closes his eyes.

 

_“I guess that’s the only good thing I get out of being immortal. I get to have you forever.”_

 

_“I already miss you.”_

 

As Zayn nods off, Liam watches a pink glow spread out over his face. He looks up at the marsh, seeing the sky turning into a sunset, the colours of orange peaches swirling into rose golden blending into the sky. And Liam feels himself blending into it too. Even as he’s deep below Earth’s surface where there’s no air, even as he’s surrounded by hell, he's also surrounded by friends... and demons that might become his friends... and love. Liam finds a calm place as he moves through the space, reaching out and drifting from his body into repose.

  
  
With Zayn’s presence so near to him, and even Harry's and maybe Louis' too, just cause of the nostalgia, it feels like home maybe isn’t so far away and maybe he wasn’t born into a messed up body at all. Cause this body was fashioned from the life of light dispersed into a higher plane from the sifted dust of a star that wanted to be down on Earth too. Liam thinks they have plenty of time to explore his virginal status and find more in their pasts and be together _almost_ in the way he always dreamed about. And Zayn thinks so too. Cause despite his curse, the light of his life has always been sweet. Right now, what a pleasant feeling it is for his eyes to see the sun everyday again.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy ending yay :)


	9. Demons : Liam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam is conflicted about learning how to use his powers. Lucky for him, he's got an expert's help.

There was once a myth of a boy who let hubris take his life after disobeying his father and playing too close to fire.

 

He had wings made of wax that held feathers together on his back. His father warned him of the hazards of the sun and the sea surrounding him in his journey through the sky.

 

If he flew too high, the wax in his wings would melt in the sun. If he flew too low, the feathers in his wings would get wet and be too heavy on his back, so the sea would catch him.

 

The middle ground was his safe haven. But the boy found so much joy and ease in flight, his complacency with his wings and over-confidence took him too high, into hubris. The sun melted his wings right off and sent him crashing back down to Earth where he drowned in the sea.

 

In a marsh not too far away from where that very boy drowned, another boy, a friend of his with a similar problem, lived.

 

In this marsh, Zayn can see several deadly hazards surrounding Liam and it scared the living shit out of him. He already had enough night terrors about Liam being in danger his entire life, sickening reoccurring dreams that almost made him afraid to go to sleep alone at night as a child, made him afraid that one day Liam was gonna leave him and never be able to come back. Now, everytime he closes his eyes all he can see is Liam being hurt.

 

Outside, there was darkness and evil that would swallow Liam whole and destroy his very being if it got a hold of him. Inside, was a house full of hungry demons that have _tried_ to swallow him whole.

 

Especially the horny one inside him just waiting to get his hands on Liam. So, Zayn had to make Liam a safe haven of his own.

 

When Liam told Zayn he’d stay in his room, Zayn took that as literally as possible.

 

They wake up together, lay around and talk all day, make-out endlessly for hours upon hours and go to sleep together. Liam likes never getting out of bed. Since Zayn keeps Lux in any kind of mirror lying around at all times, Liam doesn’t ever see him in person.

 

In fact, Liam doesn’t see anyone but Zayn. While he loves spending all this time with him and he understands Zayn thinks this is the safest way for Liam to stay here… there are some things that are just markedly _wrong_ with this situation he can't ignore through his Zayn clouded lenses.

 

First of all, he still has no idea how to properly control his powers, which is getting in the way of both Liam _and_ Zayn’s relationship and their daily life right now.

 

Second of all, Liam still hasn’t met any of the others that live in this house. He never leaves the room too much at all unless it’s using the bathroom in the middle of the night or showering. He never sees Louis or Tom or any of Lux’s family outside nor does he know anything else about them besides some of their names.

 

After his deadly encounter with Avaritia, you’d think he’d be put him off from ever wanting to meet another demon in his life ever _again_ but these aren’t just _any_ demons. They’re _Zayn’s_. He’s got much more than 7 demons it turns out. Cause demons can be fruitful and multiply just like humans. Sex demons love sex. Lux isn't this only one. There’s quite a few of those in this bunch which has been very telling of how Lux was raised.

 

Even if Zayn assured Liam that they don’t want to meet him (which Liam thinks is a lie Zayn is using just because he thinks it’s too dangerous for Liam to formally meet them), he still wants to know them. He hears them talking outside all the time and he sees people come and go from the house through their bedroom window constantly. But, Zayn still won’t introduce them and the door stays closed.

 

The door stays closed because Zayn stays with Liam 99% of the time and this is the biggest issue in this situation. Because Liam _knows_ he’s got things he’s supposed to be doing. Things that don’t involve lying in bed, kissing or cuddling or sucking Liam’s dick all day. Cause Liam is not the most important thing in this situation but he is to Zayn so all his other priorities get neglected.

 

Ever since their fight lead to Liam almost dying, Zayn doesn’t let Liam out of his sight for too long anymore. Even when someone calls for Zayn outside, if Liam is awake, he just tells them to fuck off. Typical Zayn.

 

The last issue Liam is struggling with is sex.

 

Actually, sex ties into the first issue, revolving around his head like an annoying mosquito 24 fucking 7. Zayn is just so much more experienced than him and he knows without his demon… he won’t know what to do and it stresses Liam out way too much. His hair should be going grey soon.

 

Not necessarily at this exact instant. His job is pretty easy. On his back, looking up at the ceiling and holding the cover up to his chest as he counts slowly in his head. He’s at 1,260 _very indecent_ seconds.

 

His whole body is flushed and trembling terribly. Lashes are heavy with moisture, and a seemingly permanent layer of sweat has been lathering his skin for the last few days thoroughly. He faintly blows out his mouth in a steady rhythm that keeps up with the beat of his heart.

 

Inhale.

 

Exhale.

 

 _Inhale_.

 

 _Ex… HaLE_.

 

_“Oh my--”_

 

 _“Don’t cum yet Li,”_ Zayn mumbles from underneath the blanket with his lips attached to parts of Liam’s skin he never knew had so many nerve endings.

 

Liam only nods a little as Zayn bends his knees a little more.

 

He dances his fingertips down the underside of Liam’s thighs on both sides ticklishly as he pushes them up for better access, letting sparks go off like crazy in Liam’s body. His heart rate gradually kicks up, which means his breathing does too. But Zayn said don’t cum and Liam isn’t disobedient. Well, he _is_ but not when Zayn is doing this.

 

He lightly sucks up the skin, going down to the special little area Liam didn’t know existed between the base of his shaft and balls, letting the tip of Liam’s hard-on rub against the outside of his cheek. Liam’s mouth falls open.

 

“Ahhokaaay… ohmygahhhhh _hhhhh”_ His voice dawdles the lower Zayn’s mouth goes, one eye fluttering half-way closed.

 

“No pressure or anything,” Zayn pauses for a break after over 20 glorious minutes, flipping the cover up to look at Liam.

 

 _“Am I doing something wrong?”_ Liam mumbles through sluggish lips.

 

“No, you’re _delish_ babe,” Zayn chuckles

 

“... but this would probably be much more effective for _you_ if you stopped doing this,” Zayn taps Liam's clenched fist holding his stomach.

 

Liam nods quickly, only half listening.

 

 _“That's nice, can you keep going?”_ he breathes, licking his lips with his eyes closed.

 

Zayn smirks at him, snaking his fingers into Liam's, holding his hand so he stops clenching up before going back under the cover working Liam up.

 

After his meltdown the other night, Zayn assured Liam they weren’t gonna have sex unless Liam is sure and ready, telling him he's in no rush at all. But the thing is, Liam _is_ ready. He’s _more_ than ready.

 

He admitted he’s just having a hard time controlling his powers when they get too close to actual sex. But Zayn thought that meant he’s afraid of the demon taking over. Liam couldn’t bring himself to clarify _which_ powers he actually means or why he’s having a hard time with it.

 

He still hasn’t told Zayn what really happened that night. It wasn't just the fucked up parallels with his dad he was freaking out over. His _clairvoyance_ triggered and showed him some pretty intense images.  

 

He doesn’t want Zayn to know he sees him with basically every boy he’s ever been with in every _position_ he’s ever been in in his past every time they come that close. But, Zayn is more than happy to have Liam however he wants no matter how slow or fast they take things without question. Even if they don’t ever go anywhere. Thankfully, none of the things they do now trigger Liam’s clairvoyance.

 

Zayn keeps doing shit that’s making Liam question if he was already a sex demon before he even got stuck with Lux. Doing _tasty things_ to Liam that make him feel dirty. He likes feeling dirty.

 

Tasty is a non-word Liam invented when you finally get your dream love and he turns you out to be nasty, tasty and dirty all at once. Cause that’s what Zayn has thoroughly done to Liam and there’s really no way in hell he’s ever going back to innocence now.

 

Yesterday, he did something to Liam he called “a rimjob” that Liam didn’t know had a name for. The day before that, he happily showed Liam just how sensational the underlying frenulum of prepuce is with something he jokingly calls “reverse fucking”, which are both without a doubt Liam’s favourites so far.

 

Today, he’s doing something that’s quickly becoming Liam’s new favourite he hasn’t really thought of a good name for them yet but for now, Zayn calls it “giving a hickey to the base”.

 

Now Zayn isn’t actually a sex addict. Not before anyways. But since the full moon is itching the reveal itself in the sky soon, he just wakes up hungrier and hornier everyday now and those two things combine to make a huge boner that demands to be attended to at least once a day. Just like your stomach needs food everyday, Zayn’s demon needs an orgasm.

 

Plus the added bonus in having the permission to touch Liam like this now has generally been like a real life all-you-can-eat-buffet/free for all on every nook and cranny of Liam’s body for Zayn so… here they are. Free-for-alling. Liam’s doing the complete opposite of complaining.

 

His cell-phone starts ringing below him, as it has been non-stop since he got here, so Zayn tosses it onto his chest, indicating for him to answer this time. It’s Harry of course.

 

 _“Hello?”_ Liam’s careful to keep his voice steady as Zayn wraps his hand around him below, beginning to massage leisurely while his mouth continue to light up Liam’s senses.

 

_“I finally convinced your mum that you’re not DEAD no thanks to any help from you,”_

 

Liam can hear the anger weighing _not_ so lightly in Harry’s tone, tenuous in the call last night, now slipping into full on about-to-curse-Liam-out angry.

 

 _“H-Haz I told you to j-just… tell her I’ll call,”_ He somehow gets out a full sentence despite the fact that Zayn is now gargling his balls.

 

Liam suppresses the urge to moan as he reaches down for Zayn’s short baby hairs that have been cut low again. It’s the only thing Lux has been able to do so far with Zayn’s body. He combs through his hair, all the way to the back tenderly.

 

Massaging his scalp always makes Zayn keen like a kitten. Liam’s eyes stay relaxed as he keeps his hums inside while continuing to _not_ listen to Harry going off on him.

 

 _“I fucking did! If you’d just take your c-cock out of Z-Zayn’s mouth for 5 seconds and answer your phone for once when your dear mother calls you she wouldn’t be all over my ASS right now!”_ Harry mocks Liam’s stuttering over the phone.

 

Zayn snorts below Liam, flipping the cover off his head again as he smiles up at him, squinting a little. He wipes the corners of his mouth quickly and takes Liam’s hand out of his hair, rubbing his thumb over it while the other continues to stroke Liam with laxed ease.

 

“Tell him after he goes and drinks bleach out of his dad’s asshole, he can get back us. And he can smoke my _dick_ while he’s at it.” He says that last part loud so Harry hears it, planting a little kiss on Liam’s wrist.

 

Lux laughs heartily, with his chin laying in his overlapping arms, squeezing his eyes closed in the prompt up hand mirror set up in front of Zayn from where he’s been quietly watching him go to work on Liam.

 

Liam rolls his eyes, taking his hand back and pushing Zayn’s head back down.

 

“Zayn says _sod off._ This is all you have to say to her if she keeps harassing you, just listen to me,” He continues as Zayn goes down on him again, licking under Liam’s length with a smile. It's so unbelievably hot how much Zayn gets off on getting Liam off.

 

 _“No YOU listen to ME,”_ Harry stops him although Liam isn’t listening to shit because Zayn is swallowing him whole now with a mission to suck the soul out of Liam’s body.

 

_“If you don’t contact her within the next 18 fucking hours, ME AND MIKEY are going to be hauled to the police station for questioning since we’re the last people who you were with today. He’s got a lengthy criminal record. So either call the person who birthed you to THIS world or I will drag your ass back here myself before your vacation in hell gets us ARRESTED! I can’t even think about EVER going anywhere right now if you never come back. We already look suspicious with just this alone. How incriminating will it look if me or Mikey left town after facilitating in your disappearance with an alleged serial killer here that has a thing for teenaged boys still at large? I told her and the bloody police you’re with Zayn and you’d answer the phone. If you keep making me a LIAR--”_

 

“OKAY!” Liam almost shouts it when a particular nudge at the back of Zayn’s throat sends a shot of sparkling bliss through him, pooling in his gut.

 

 _“Don’t cum.”_ Zayn mumbles again as his head dips slowly like a low wave, sliding Liam out of his mouth with his slightly puffy lips before going all the way back down smoothly with his ridiculously loose two hand twist combo.

 

Liam shakes his head slowly as he watches him, biting down on his lip, almost letting the phone slip out of his hand.

 

Watching Zayn deepthroat like it was the easiest thing in life was undoubtedly the most bewitching thing on an almost _inhuman_ level of incredulity. Even _Lux_ can’t take his eyes off him… even if he wasn’t being forced to watch. This is the only time he doesn’t complain about being in the mirror.

 

No one but Zayn could ever make something look so dirty, cause he loves making a point to get pre-cum smeared all over his mouth and cheeks, but also make it this goddamn sexy at the same time. And he does it so contently. Like he could just as easily be eating a popsicle or something. It’s amazing that Liam isn’t dead right now. He doesn’t know how much longer he can hold off on exploding.

 

_“She’s calling you now so I’m calling you back in a few minutes cause I have something IMPORTANT you need to know about where you’re choosing to risk your life at for a YEAR. Don’t forget to ANSWER THE MOTHERFUCKING PHONE!”_

 

Harry hangs up on him after spending 5 minutes chewing him out even though everything he just said fell on deaf ears as all Liam’s attention is on Zayn, eyes locked on each other and all. His phone lights up again immediately after, right on cue.

 

“ _Oh God,”_ Liam sits up suddenly when he sees it’s not Harry this time, pulling an annoyed Zayn up with him, one hand under Zayn’s armpit, easily bringing his body up. It just seems all kinds of wrong to get a blowjob while talking on the phone with his mother.

 

 _“You know, hell sure does have a good reception… I’m sick of your phone cockblocking me.”_ He sighs as he flops onto Liam’s stomach with his lips pressed on his chest and his arms hugging him.

 

“Zayn please be quiet.”

 

 _“Okay… throat’s pretty shredded anyways.”_ Zayn smiles and climbs into Liam’s lap going straight for his neck, reaching down Liam’s arm and answering the phone for him. Liam said be quiet. He didn’t say stop.

 

Zayn even holds it up to Liam’s ear for him before he can protest, kissing over his collarbone while the other hand migrates down Liam's chest.

 

“Hi mummy,” Liam chirps in his brightest tone, taking the phone from Zayn before getting an earful from his screaming mother.

 

He’s been gone for approximately 6 hours so he can’t be officially reported “missing” on the surface yet. But it’s been about a week or two down here. He hasn’t been ignoring her calls on purpose. She just decides to call whenever he’s in very _hard_ positions… like the one he’s in the middle of right now.

 

“I know, I’ll be _back,”_ Liam sighs, tilting his head away from Zayn as he switches ears on the phone while Zayn is rubbing down his tummy and chest, wincing as he listens to Liam’s mother.

 

“No this isn’t about _Wolverhampton_. I just need… a break--” He stops when she starts yelling again, biting down on his lip with his eyes closed and holding his hand on the small of Zayn’s back.

 

While she yells at him about _“running away like his prat of a father”_ , Liam rolls his eyes, pouting and sitting his chin on Zayn's shoulder and tilting his head to fit perfectly in the crook of Zayn’s neck. She _always_ does this to him.

 

Zayn starts to slowly gyrate his hips into Liam, peppering his neck and jaw again lovingly so he won’t feel so bad about everyone cursing him out and verbally abusing him right now just cause they want to be together - _alone-_ right now. Sure they're in hell but  _still_. 

 

“I promise I… _won’t_ .” He nods, quiet again until Zayn starts rubbing his own hard-on again Liam’s until he pulls off his own pants and lets Liam's go _lower,_ wrapping one arm around his neck as he rolls back and forth while his other hand smoothes against the skin around Liam’s waist.

 

They're not actually having sex. But they're not far from it now. Just a matter a pressure now. This is way worse than getting a blowjob while talking to his mother.

 

 _“Y-yes,”_ Liam nods shakily on the phone as Zayn leans back on his arms with his hands sliding back on Liam’s thighs and his legs wrapping around him, continuing to move against Liam in a slow and steady rhythm with a smug grin.

 

 _‘I   l o v e   y o u ’_ Zayn mouths silently as he smiles, sliding it _right between his cheeks_ and back so _torturously_ slow as his hips curve in and out.

 

 

He puts this arch in his back and closes his eyes as his own mouth lets his heavy breathing turn into quiet hums, reversing the movement like he’s pressed a button that says “rewind in slow motion” in himself.

 

Liam looks down at Zayn's boner, letting his body slowly roll into him. His mouth waters, too heavy to close completely.

 

He swears it winks at him. Zayn moves his hand away when he tries to touch him.

 

 _“Z,”_ Liam gasps as his stomach dips when Zayn slides a little too close. It’s just the tip. But his gut morphs inside him.

 

Zayn lurches forward to cover his mouth, laughing silently. His hand is pulled off as Liam’s chest heaves.

 

_“Mum I… I have t-to go…”_

 

There’s no way she can’t hear this.

 

Zayn quickly leans back up to Liam’s ear.

 

 _“You’re making me so warm,”_ He whispers. That’s Zayn’s way of saying “wet”, cause their bodies are overheating and it’s warm when he lifts up a little and teasing Liam as his thumb moves over the tip between them now, smearing everything that’s collected there over his fingers and licking it off. He doesn't even need sex demon powers.

 

_“You wanna finish?”_

 

Liam nods with his eyes closed, shivering as Zayn’s tongue skids against the sensitive skin behind his ear slowly.

 

_“Can I thank the delinquent for kidnapping my son?”_

 

“Hi Karen.” Zayn says, loud this time and Liam could just _kill_ him right now.

 

This conversation is over.

 

 _“Okay I… l-love you BYE.”_ He hangs up and drops the phone as his voice can’t stop quivering from holding in his orgasm.

 

He pulls Zayn into him again, tangling their tongues into each other hungrily. Zayn leans in while Liam pulls back, his arms wrapped around Zayn’s back while he tilts Liam’s head for him to finish bruising his neck. Without their demons, Zayn is the bossy one again and Liam is compliant.

 

_“Why didn’t you tell her we were eloping?”_

 

 _“I am going to kill you,”_ Liam rasps, sliding his hands down as he moves like he’s gonna climb on top instead but Zayn pins him down on his back again.

 

_“Threatening to kill me... you really know how to seduce me.”_

 

He really shouldn’t encourage Zayn’s casual joking about _dying_. Everyone jokes about wanting to die but now that Liam is aware that he’s had actual suicidal thoughts for a while now and probably acted on them before all this… it just makes joking about it dismally bleak.

 

He gets the feeling that when Safaa said she saw him hurt himself, it wasn’t the first time. Cause he would’ve only had to cut his hands to open the portal once. But it sounded like she’d seen him do something like that to himself more than one time. Zayn always wore long sleeves and leather jackets cause he claimed to hate showing his tattoos but… Liam thinks it might’ve been to cover something else he didn’t want anyone else to see now.

 

 _“Can now I please?”_ Liam begs but Zayn shakes his head.

 

_“Just a little longer, I’m pretty close too-”_

 

 _“Z, I… can’t,”_ Liam shakes his head as he holds Zayn’s back. Zayn nods as he sits up.

 

“ _Okay… go ahead,”_

 

Liam is already releasing his load all over as Zayn says he can _finally._ They both finish, kisses missing their marks now as their warm bodies grit. Zayn’s face gets buried in Liam’s neck, muffling his soft whimpers. Liam’s however are _not_ muffled nor are they soft at all. Zayn hits him in his chest with his fist weakly.

 

 _“Lima shut the fuck up,”_ Zayn hisses breathlessly but Liam can’t as it all crashes down on him, leaving him feeble in his skin, letting a spent-out wave hit. It’s not fair he’s been holding it way longer than Zayn.

 

Zayn who has actually turned out to be quite sadistic. A sadist and a masochist? It really is a match made in hell. But since they’re here, there’s no limit to how much sin they can commit.

 

God, EVERYONE in the _house_ can probably hear them and he doesn’t even know how many live here. Liam stays flushed out just from that thought alone.

 

 _“I’m sorry,”_ he sighs.

 

“No it was good babe. I told last night it gets better when you release the tension and hold it. The longer you get stimulated, the more _dopamine_ pours in.” His voice slurs

 

"... neurochemical processes producing bigger…. loads, and all that _nice shit._ _”_  He murmurs like he’s intoxicated. Well, they both are right now.

 

Liam snorts at his dirty intellectual jargon, tapping his rose-scented sweaty back a few times with his drained fingers.

 

They lay there for a while, wrapped up in Zayn's naturally sweet cologne that's jetting off all into the air around them, coming down from their highs, covered in filth. Next to them, a Lux chirps from the mirror.

 

 _“You’re getting much better at the whole on demand stuff but that weeping like a fucking banshee...”_ Lux tuts in the glass.

 

_“It’s kind of hot but there are children here sometimes, guy.”_

 

“Are banshees real?” Liam tilts his head up towards the ceiling.

 

Lux told him something about some of his siblings having kids. He thinks he’s seen a little girl come to the house with an older man with dark skin through the window a few times but it’s so stormy out there, you can barely see when anyone is moving through it unless the storm calms. It only seems to calm for a few seconds everyday. When it does, he can see the empty land stretching out for miles like they’re in the middle of nowhere in the sky.

 

 _“Of course. I’ve got a few friends with a banshee for a mum.”_ Lux tells him.

 

“What are their names?” Liam perks up curiously. Lux rarely talks about his _friends_ here.

 

_“Alivia and Antonia.”_

 

Those were pretty names.

 

 _Alivia, Antonia and Luxuria._ Liam smiles a little. All their names usually end with “ _ia”_ he’s noticed.

 

“So… banshee’s are a type of demon?”

 

_“Not exactly… they’re father is a marilith demon.”_

 

“I thought marilith demons were female?” Liam used to play Dungeons and Dragons as a kid.

 

A marilith was always female with the body of a serpent. There’s even a picture of one in the Enchiridion. But… Lux obviously knows more about demons than the information curated in that book written by a witch… and definitely more than Dungeons and Dragons.

 

_“That doesn’t mean shit to genderless demons that stem from sin. Ava and G are mariliths. They’re not exclusively ‘female’ or ‘male’.”_

 

Liam nods. They’re _all_ non-binary then. So Avaritia’s form can either look like an alternate version of Zayn or a giant snake. Same for Tony. It's funny that they're twins but completely opposite each other in every possible way.

 

_“Alivia and Antonia were actually born as demons so they’re not really half-bloods like you. They’re just… peculiar.”_

 

“Like you?” Liam says.

 

“He isn’t peculiar, he’s a pain in my _ass_.” Zayn scoffs.

 

 _“A banshee is the type of undead spirit that doesn’t live in the underworld nor does she possess kakos.”_ Lux goes on for Liam despite Zayn.

 

_“She comes from the surface of usually celtic uplands, near Ireland and Scotland. Woman who have died whilst baring a child whose soul is cursed to herald the dead. Their mother died at childbirth because she was baring the twins of a demon she fell in love with. Ava met--”_

 

“Alright we’ve learned enough.” Zayn cuts him off as he rolls his eyes and sits up off Liam’s chest, grabbing the mirror as he stands up and cleans them off.

 

 _“Demons can fall in love with humans?”_ Liam murmurs sleepily. It doesn't take much to put him to sleep when he has an orgasm like that.

 

 _“Why are you always such a fucking cunt? Maybe actually learning something about where the fuck he is since he's living with DEMONS will be fucking useful to him? He can’t stay locked away in this room like a caged animal_ **_FOREVER_ ** _.”_ Lux snaps at Zayn but he ignores him like always.

 

Liam tenses when Lux says that, reminding Liam of something similar he heard Lux say last night while Zayn was sleeping. He’s not just talking about keeping Liam in a cage. He’s talking about himself too.

 

“Are you hungry?” Zayn asks Liam as he wipes off his stomach.

 

Liam blinks dense eyes down his own body, looking at Zayn’s other hand, astute as he keeps the small mirror facing him while he tugs on sweats, abandoning the t-shirt that was flung to the ground. It’s quite a talent, how much he gets done with one hand. Cause he can do a _lot_ with one hand.

 

“I’m gonna go make you something and then we’ll shower after, and watch a film.” He kisses Liam’s tired lips anyways since he doesn’t answer before going out the door.

 

Liam loved watching films with Zayn. They don’t really _watch_ much of the movie.

 

“Be _right_ back.” He sings as he skips out of the room, all bright eyed and bushy tailed now that he’s put the starving sex demon in him to rest for the day. It’ll be back again in a few hours.

 

While Liam lies alone now, his mind drifts as he looks at the mirror in the closet next to the bed, contemplating things as his hazy euphoria drains quickly, turning into stressful things. _Lux things_.

 

A conversation he had with Lux last night about some… personal issues that have been plaguing him since he got here.

 

After Zayn went to sleep, Lux tried to convince him to get Zayn to let him out.

 

Now obviously that sounds like a _terrible_ idea at first but, Liam is thinking maybe there’s some good logic behind getting Lux out, even if it’s only for 5 minutes.

 

Part of his logic being the fact that Lux can’t stay in the mirror forever just like Liam can’t stay in this room forever if they’re being pratical of how much time is being spent here. Letting Lux out willingly would be much better than having him _force_ himself out. The less blood spilled in this the better.

 

The other part of his logic here in letting Lux out isn’t as simple but it’s a necessary burden he’s carrying around in his stupid gut. He needs Lux’s help for something Zayn can’t help him with. He still needs guidance for how to control his powers.

 

Here’s the issue about the whole sex stuff. The demon side of him taking over is only a small concern to Liam. Not only because it won’t really be Liam but also because he _knows_ Zayn isn’t really into that kind of sex. The kind that involves his behind being worked over it’s limit… that limit being anything past the tip, even though he says he doesn't mind. _Liam minds._

 

He doesn’t like the idea of Zayn changing himself for him, doing things he really doesn’t like or forcing himself to like or _hurting himself_ for Liam. He wants it the other way around anyways.

 

But even without his demon, Liam still can’t control his clairvoyance at all.

 

Whenever he and Zayn start getting close to changing his virginal status _specifically_ , his amplified sight triggers just as intensely as it did the first time and it gives him a terrible migraine for hours and completely fucks up his emotion, making him want to heave out his chest all over again and he doesn’t understand _why_ this is happening to him. Cause it doesn’t happen when he lets his demon take control. But when he’s himself, the thought of sex makes him sick.

 

They can never get a fucking break. He’s praying for just one moment of normalcy here. He doesn’t care how long Zayn can really last, even if it’s for _10 minutes_. Or longer… honestly, Liam wants Zayn to fuck him for _decades_. But he can’t.

 

The influx of Zayn’s entire sexual history flashing before his eyes… it’s just too much for him to handle. He throws up after seeing it now and he feels like shit for a while, unable to even let Zayn _touch_ him. It’s almost given him an aversion to sex again at this point and he knows he can’t avoid telling Zayn about it forever. He’s not exactly lying to him but… he’s not being honest either.

 

Lacking trust and honesty is one of the most unstable things that can ruin the foundation of any relationship. Even though he trusts Zayn with his life… he can’t seem to let him in fully now.

 

He has an inkling his last relationship might be why. He _knows_ Zayn would never be like Sophia but after what happened with her, he’s just had this really fucked up his view of sex even more than it already was before.

 

 _Extreme_ case scenario, girl faking her identity and targeting guy by emotionally manipulating and abusing him into never wanting to have sex for an insidious agenda for the devil but _still_. Lack of trust and honesty is lack of trust and honesty.

 

Liam _definitely_ knows he’s not the smartest person in the world now cause that relationship almost ended his actual life and he didn't even notice until it was too late. Yeah he was fucking blind, he gets that, but FUCK. The thought of what happened with Sophia still shakes him.

 

So anyways, back to the present fucked up issues instead of the past ones that never seem to leave them alone. It's like trying to run away from the demons hiding in the darkness of your shadow.

 

While he hasn’t told Zayn about his problems… he’s told Lux about it. About Sophia. His confusion with this sex stuff. His clairvoyance. Just all of it.

 

Only because Lux is a sexual _maven_. Liam literally could not get a better advisor if he went and scheduled an appointment with an actual sex counselor (Yes, those exist. He’s seen legitimate brochures in his old therapist's de facto shrink’s office.)

 

So with that in mind, he thought Lux could tell him how to make it stop so he wouldn’t have to worry about telling Zayn about it. Cause Zayn would be _mortified_ if he knew Liam has seen it all and Liam would have to assure him he already knows he was kind of a slut and he’s not judgmental _at all_ but then Zayn would know why he really gets all jittery and emotional when they get too close and Liam would just prefer they _not_ go through all that.

 

And okay that’s not the sole reason he told Lux. Liam just… really likes talking to him.

 

Now Liam doesn’t dislike _Lux_ . He frustrates him and plays games with his head and just generally acts like a real immature _asshole_ sometimes _._ But Liam doesn’t hate him. He doesn’t know how he feels about Lux cause Harry’s right, it’s confusing as hell. He doesn’t know how he’s _supposed_ to feel about him.

 

So of course being _Liam_ , he doesn’t think about it. But that doesn’t change the fact that Lux is really easy to talk to. Cause it’s just like talking to Zayn.

 

Even if Lux acts like he doesn’t really care to listen. Even if he doesn’t have a choice in being in the mirror and even if he always tells Liam he talks too much and snaps at Liam with his manic outbursts and threatens to kill him constantly if he doesn’t “shut the hell up and leave him the fuck _alone_ ,” he’s still there whenever Liam wants to talk. About anything.

 

Liam thinks Lux secretly enjoys it too. In a weird way… he actually thinks they would’ve been friends in another universe if things were different. He doesn’t consider too many people as genuine mates. But he wouldn’t mind considering Lux. But he keeps that to himself.

 

Their late night chats almost feel like therapy to Liam.

 

Every night since he’s been here after Zayn goes to sleep, Liam stays up and talks to Lux all night long through the mirror in the closet door until he wears himself out or Lux makes him go to sleep with Zayn. Mostly random stuff, Liam asking him a billion questions Lux doesn’t seem to mind sometimes answering.

 

Harry keeps telling him is going to end badly. He thinks Lux is going to trick Liam into doing something he shouldn’t. Like letting him out of the mirror and getting control of Zayn’s body again and _fucking_. Cause once Lux has control, it’s nearly impossible for him to get put back in the mirror now without him going willingly.

 

The more time goes on, the stronger his presence in Zayn’s body is. The only dominance Zayn has over Lux anymore is that he can’t leave the mirror on his own. Well _he can_ if he gets angry enough but he’s been pretty calm so, there haven’t been any more incidents like the one that ended with Lux going homicide in Liam’s bathroom mirror. But Harry keeps warning Liam to stop talking to him because he thinks he can get Liam to do whatever he wants him to do.

 

Apparently, Tony told Harry something about Lux that’s lead him to believe that he can bend Liam’s will to his own without Liam knowing he’s doing it. But Liam knows that isn’t true because Lux has told him several times he can’t control his mind and he _hates_ being accused of forcing people to do things they don’t wanna do. But then again, he’s also a really good liar so… Liam’s not gonna be dumb about it.

 

He has good faith in himself to trust that he wouldn't be oblivious enough to not realise his own actions aren't really his own. Like if he found himself wanting to shatter the mirror… which he _hasn't_. Not even close.

 

Lux is still a demon above all else and Liam knows not to trust him. But… Liam’s a demon too so maybe that cancels the whole trust thing out?

 

The question of can he trust Lux has been bothering him since they talked at school on the patio, because he still doesn’t know. Obviously Zayn does to a certain degree, cause Lux is actually helping him. But he doesn't trust him with Liam _at all._

 

So last night, the question of how much can _Liam_ trust Lux came up when he offered to help Liam with his problem but there’s only one way he can do that: If he comes out of the mirror.

 

 

***last night***

 

 

 _“How can I be clairvoyant if you’re not?”_ Liam asks quietly after Lux informs him he doesn’t know how he can unsee everything Zayn has done.

 

 _“Dunno.”_ Lux shrugs like he really couldn’t care less, snapping his fingers to flick a flame above him casually as he floats on his back over the bed, not even looking at Liam.

 

Apparently, Lux isn’t actually clairvoyant.

 

He has no idea why Liam keeps seeing Zayn with other people whenever they get close. As far as Lux knows, demons aren’t clairvoyant so that power isn’t coming from his pit.

 

 _“How could I have never noticed being clairvoyant before this?”_ Liam asks in confusion.

 

Harry has always said they had a psychic link or whatever but… Liam’s _never_ been able to feel a tether like this between them he could follow or see through Zayn’s past.

 

But then again, maybe he has.

 

He's sometimes found himself able to know where Zayn was when he needed him. Emphasis on the _sometimes_.

 

He can vaguely remember knowing where Zayn was when the fire broke out but then feeling blind again when he got kidnapped by High Tide. Or whenever Zayn was mad at him and he’d stop talking to Liam for a while, putting a massive distance between them until he wasn’t mad anymore. Then Liam was blocked out completely. Like the tether revealed itself inside him randomly. That’s why people always asked Liam where Zayn was if they were ever looking for him, not just cause they were usually together. Liam just _knew_.

 

If Liam didn’t know where Zayn was, something was usually _wrong_.

 

 _“Maybe you’ve got a much deeper connection you didn’t realise.”_ Lux says in a mockingly dreamy way.

 

 _“Like we’re soulmates?”_ Liam snorts, wondering what the tether actually is as he feels it, around them.

 

That word still makes him laugh. It doesn't seem like an accurate way to describe it.

 

Ben and Anthony might be mates. Cher and Joey, mates. Harry and Niall are _mates_. Harry might be a bit more than a mate to Liam but for the sake of this specific word, Harry is a genuine mate. He feels for all his friends but there’s different levels to this stuff he feels.

 

There’s no one in Liam’s life that has ever compared to what Zayn is too him. Their relationship goes far beyond _friendship._

 

Saying they’re “mates” or “friends”, soulmates, boyfriends, no matter how you say it, doesn’t sound right to Liam. Zayn isn’t just a mate to him. He can’t even really say Lux is that much either. There’s no _labels_ that ever feel fitting for this shit to Liam. It’s indescribable.

 

Lux shrugs.

 

 _“I dunno what you wanna call it, it's not mine to say as I’m. Not. Zayn.”_ Lux pointedly adds in slow emphasis that he’s not _him_ , like he’s trying to beat that into Liam’s head.

 

Lux probably knows Liam had seen a small glimpse of him and ever since, he’s constantly reminding Liam that he’s not Zayn, not so subtly, which makes Liam rolls his eyes. He KNOWS he’s not Zayn.

 

Liam understands he can be a little dull sometimes but he’s not an idiot and he hates when people treat him like he’s this helpless dumbass. He’s got enough of that from his mental health alone.

 

Just cause they look alike doesn’t mean they’re the same person. Well, it _does_ in this case but still. Liam is aware of that they are two separate beings now.

 

 _“I’m not a total dunce you know…”_ Liam mumbles as he picks at the furry wig rug.

 

 _“I know that.”_ Lux snorts.

 

_“… but I don’t think you do. You think you’re so dull. Cause you can’t see yourself.”_

 

Liam looks up at him, hanging out over at the window now, letting his leg dangle while he looks out at the storm forlornly.

 

 _“You have no idea what you are.”_ He murmurs to himself before he snorts again, shaking his head.

 

“ _Dumb boy_.”

 

Liam gives him a penetrative stare, only able to see the silvery mirage of his eyes in his profile glinting in the light.

 

Calling Liam a dumbass is one thing. But saying “dumb boy” somehow feels like a totally different meaning, cause he’s not saying Liam is dumb as in unintelligent or even smart. It feels kind of endearing.

 

_Dumb demon._

 

He doesn’t say that to him. Lux gets angry why Liam starts calling him names even though he does it to Liam all the time. But he doesn’t really think Lux is a demon in the mirror. Without kakos, he’s not an incubus. He can act like it well but Liam doesn’t really know what Lux is in the mirror. He’s more than a reflection that’s for sure. But Lux doesn’t talk about it because he _hates_ being in there, which is another reason Liam talks to him every night. It seems like he’s okay when Liam is talking to him. Cause Zayn ignores Lux.

 

It’s funny how their roles are reversed once again. Liam being the one always in the mirror and Zayn being the one avoiding looking at it as much as he can at all anymore.

 

Lux continues to talk about things related to but, a little more than, soulmates towards the window.

 

_“Beings that feel deep familiarity in one another, like you and your narcissistic loverboy,”_

 

Liam shakes his head at the ground but he can't help smiling as Lux goes on.

 

Him calling Zayn a narcissist isn’t necessarily a negative thing to Liam anymore cause it’s an inside joke Lux shared with him. The play on words is too _clever_ not to appreciate. Although Liam is an avid oppugner to cheesy puns thanks to Harry, Lux has a funny way of saying things that makes you actually enjoy hearing it no matter how much Liam might’ve disliked ambiguous, double entendres before. Now that he’s in on the loop, it’s genuinely funny now in a depraved, gallows humoured kind of way.

 

Lux doesn’t mind telling Liam all about Narcissus.

 

He got his name from water. His father was the river and his mother was the sea, Cephissus the river god and Liriope, a sea nymph. The fact that he literally came from bodies of water and still couldn’t swim is quite hilarious. So when Lux calls Zayn a narcissist, he’s really referencing his aquaphobia contradicting his very name and root of existence. But of course, Lux has to make it _dark,_ mocking the fact that he had his own marsh and _drowned_ in it, his life staying consistent with his contradiction all the way to the very end, _becoming_ his end.

 

He continues to tell Liam about beings like him and his narcissist that come in a pair.

 

 _“... they tend to see things in each other they don’t see in anyone else. Your mate doesn’t have to be your “friend.” or even boyfriend. Someone’s spirit you share with follows you to the other side of every loop. That one breath of life that completes a gemel. Not everything has a conventional label… like me for example. There's many labels you can assign to me but in reality, nothing truly captures the essence of what I am as a whole being since I’m from a_ part _of spirituality in someone’s humanity. Just like the essence of you and him. Fuck labels, just go with the flow. Who the fuck cares what you are? You’re together. That’s all that really means anything.”_

 

Whenever Lux says stuff like that about himself, it gives Liam a chill cause it sounds like he’s saying he doesn’t really exist. He’s talking without any lust/kakos so… he’s more than _a sin_ . More than a demon or a reflection. Even if it doesn’t sound like he’s really talking. Liam can register that he’s really there somehow so… whatever he is, he can’t _not exist_.

 

Liam leans back and closes his eyes like usual, letting his words evanesce as soon as they leave the mirror as the sound manages to just barely escape the surface. It’s funny how Liam doesn’t feel blind or deaf when he’s talking Lux even though he technically can’t really hear or see him. Talking to him feels quite the opposite actually.

 

Contradictions layer on top of more contradictions with Lux things just like the human he came from. Even something as simple as a conversation. A meaningless conversation that actually isn’t so meaningless at all if he listens to his words carefully.

 

 _“There’s probably lots of things about you that you’ve always been subconsciously… or hell, maybe even_ consciously _aware of about yourself that you’ve just ignored… in your case, purposefully ignored. Just like demons, some humans are a little more peculiar than others, having more to them than the average person. Even humans like your friend Harry and Zayn. But, I’m sure they probably never denied that special part of them that makes them who they are like how you chose to, which is most probably why you never “noticed” your clairvoyance.”_

 

There seems to be a deeper implication in Lux’s tone there, saying Liam’s been choosing to “deny part of himself,”. Liam opens narrow eyes at him as he glares.

 

There’s a deeper meaning in _every fucking thing Lux says_.

 

Even if he’s virtually invisible in like and sound when he’s outside of Zayn (though Zayn says Lux’s voice just sounds like _him_ in his head, which Liam thinks is really interesting) he still very much acts like an alternative, darker toned version of Zayn, literally and figuratively.

 

Demon Zayn, wise beyond their years. And Liam can read Zayn better than anyone, demon or not. Lux is just a bit _harder_ to read. Cause he doesn’t let Liam ever see him outside of Zayn. Seeing through someone you can’t see is genuinely _impossible_. But somehow… Liam's getting there. He understands Lux a little more everyday.

 

Literally, cause sometimes he says Latin or Greek words that don't really translate to English and Liam knows he’s starting to understand a little bit of that too. Most languages have origins in Latin anyways so, if you know or study Latin, you’ll have a pretty good understanding in knowledge of many languages at once.

 

While Lux seems to be insinuating that, unlike Zayn, Liam was “in the closet”, it also sounds like he’s saying Liam has more abilities to him that he’s never paid attention to before he became a demon. Cause even Harry has always embraced his extra senses and is very comfortable in his sexuality, open-minded and secure with who he is. But Liam has _never_ been secure with himself. He projects and disconnects until he’s numb and takes meds that made him even more numb.

 

He just ignored obvious things, like his ability to leave his body at will and being able to see Zayn in places he’s nowhere near despite his eyesight or feel where he was when he shouldn’t. In fact, this bad habit of his in being willingly ignorant and oblivious is probably why he never “noticed” the red flags about Sophia. Like the fact that he knew nothing about her and felt like he was talking to a stranger yet still continued to let her into his life until she knew everything about him.

 

Deep down, he’s never been hallucinating when something strange and _impossible_ happens to him, like getting stuck in a mirror, but it was just easier to think he was crazy than to think he had special capabilities.

 

But the one thing he’s never denied about himself, not even a little, is his connection to Zayn. He’s never denied that he loved him.

 

Being able to feel and see things in Zayn no one else can was _always_ special to him and he was never afraid to tell anyone just that.

 

So Lux is right. He’s probably always had this unique bond to Zayn that goes _beyond_ sight through extra senses the average pair don’t typically have. Afterall, he didn’t know they were _actually_ bound to each other until Zayn showed him at his window when he kissed him as he was floating in the rain.

 

Liam’s mother always told him when you love someone, you make them conscious of things they can’t see or realise in themselves. And that’s what Zayn always did with Liam.

 

Whether he was tutoring Liam in his English class, helping him study or encouraging Liam to go for football or introducing him to cool music or just simply giving Liam a kiss.

 

That’s what he did when he kissed Liam and showed him their tether Liam never realised was there before he promised he’d come back to him. Like maybe Zayn had always known about _that_ too.

 

Even as a child, Zayn always spoke of himself like he wasn’t gonna always be there with Liam one day. But he somehow knew Liam would always be able to see where he is.

 

Of course, that was just a seemingly _saccharine_ sentiment for matching interplanetary tattoos that was honestly prepping them for marriage to everyone else but subconsciously, maybe Liam knew what Zayn meant by that promise to each other. Even as 12 year old little cherubs. And Harry too, knowing they probably came from the same star with his own weird, extra-ordinary senses. Maybe he’s from a past-life too. Zayn and Liam both swear Harry jumped into the future from the past cause he can see and feel stuff _neither_ of them can. Liam was just quite literally too blind to see the _actual_ physical connection he has to Zayn.

 

Now… he’s seeing way too much. Things he’s _never_ wanted to see Zayn doing. But maybe his clairvoyance is fucking with him now because things have changed between him and Zayn. For the good and bad. Right now, the bad outweighs the good by a landslide considering where they are as far as being in hell goes. But there’s good there, no matter how small it is and they both treasure and adore all the good they get from each other and want to keep what they have together now safe and protected.

 

Harry will always be there to supply that too with his defunct condoms he keeps in his charmed wallet.

 

That’s what’s changed between them. They’ve never been with each other like this before in ways that required condoms. Touching each other intimately and making each other feel these kinds of things and being down to actually make love and now Liam’s powers want to start cockblocking him.

 

The last time… it wasn’t really Liam. And the first time… it wasn’t totally Zayn. So, all of this is still very much fresh and new to both of them. He’s still never actually _felt_ Zayn the way he wants to. And now anytime he tries, that bat swings into his guts and stops it from happening.

 

 _“So you don’t have any ideas as to why I keep seeing things I don’t want to see?”_ Liam prompts, back to the original question here.

 

Lux folds his hands over his stomach as he slumps back against the window sill, closing his eyes.

 

_“You’re pretty desperate to get some dick huh?”_

 

 _“LUX!”_ Liam hisses with blooming cheeks, making him laugh.

 

_“I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”_

 

Liam grits his teeth in annoyance.

 

_“Why can’t you ever just give me a straight answer?”_

 

_“Because there isn’t a “straight” answer I can offer your throbbing gay ass. I don’t know shit about clairvoyance Leem. Sensory perception isn’t really a thing I can comprehend in the way you’re asking me as I’m not a human being and I haven’t got a body.”_

 

Liam is gonna pretend like Lux didn’t just say that his ass was throbbing. He’s not sure where Lux keeps finding all these old nicknames. Stuff Zayn used to call him when he had a funny lisp, unable to pronounce the “a” (he honestly still sort of does have a _slight_ lisp and Liam thinks it’s really cute but Zayn hates it and it makes it even more cute).

 

Back in the day, Liam was either _Leeyum_ or _Leem_ . Leem eventually evolved into _bean_ somewhere in nursery and “Liam” was abandoned altogether as Lima Bean was born.

 

 _“I thought you knew everything.”_ Liam mumbles. Lux snorts.

 

_“Nihil scitis sum.”_

 

 _“Isn’t that a paradox?”_ Liam asks.

 

Lux laughs genuinely hard this time, holding his stomach and so does Liam cause Lux wasn’t expecting him to understand what he just said.

 

 _I know nothing._

 

It’s a Socratic paradox Liam remembers Harry, Zayn, Joey and the rest of the boys talking about a lunch a few times. Because they’re those annoying people who act like philosophers and speak with words no one understands and they’re obsessed with Socrates and Plato and all those other dead Greek people so Liam is forced to be a little familiar with it too.

 

 _“What’s that mean?”_ There’s a wide smile in his voice. Liam gets a rushed surge of delight whenever he impresses Lux of his knowledge he’s picked up in random places.

 

 _“It means you’re a_ liar _. How can you_ know _that you know_ nothing _if you know_ nothing _?”_

 

Liam _hates_ paradoxes and he’s always hated philosophy. His life has been confusing enough, why make it even more twisted with things that are a _ctually_ impossible to ever understand and are made specifically to make you run around in a circle forever?

 

 _“You’re just so goddamn clever huh?”_ Lux tuts, growing mildly hostile when Liam calls him a liar.

 

_“Even if I did know anything about clairvoyance, which I DON’T, it’s not like I can help you with anything while I’m in this fucking glass. You’re not even supposed to be talking to me.”_

 

Liam frowns.

 

_“Why not?”_

 

_“Why do you think?”_

 

Of course he knows why Zayn doesn’t want them talking to each other. The same reason Harry doesn’t. Zayn keeps him locked in there, away from Liam, for an _obvious_ reason. The last rule of Zayn's.

 

Liam looks back at Zayn as he sleeps for a moment, pursing his lips tightly before looking at Lux again.

 

“ _He didn’t say I couldn’t talk to you.”_

 

_“Then why do you wait until he’s sleeping to secretly lurk around in the dark?”_

 

That was… a valid question Liam doesn’t have an answer to. It’s not like they’re doing anything wrong. He’s not trying to have sex with _him_ , Liam just wants his advice _about_ sex.

 

 _“I’m not lurking around,”_ Liam says since he doesn’t know what else to say.

 

_“You want my advice? Talk to him about it your fucking self instead of pestering ME with your shit that I really couldn’t give any less of a brick about.”_

 

Now he’s all the way vexed.

 

 _“I just fucking told you I’m not CLAIRVOYANT and I’m not about to continue to go in CIRCLES and fucking repeat myself to you. You are BREAKING fucking nerves. I’m not Zayn so why don’t you ask the one that’s actually FUCKING clairvoyant and stop acting like an immature child about it. Aren’t you an Englishman or am I speaking the wrong language, for fuck sake.”_  He groans as he shakes his head, looking out the window with what is probably a grimace.

 

Liam knows if Lux could leave the mirror and get away from him right now, he would. Whenever he pisses him off, and he’s _very_ easy to piss off, he either disappears for a while of completely ignores Liam.

 

Liam closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to be so annoying but he _always_ ends up doing it anyways.

 

_“Lux, I can’t… talk to anyone else about this. You’re the only two I ever see and I don’t want to upset him.”_

 

 _“You won’t upset him as long as you tell him the truth, babe.”_ Lux says, gently for once instead of snapping at him again.

 

_“Why would your sex struggle upset him when he knows about your disassociative aversion to your sexuality? That’s probably what your entire issue is anyways. You haven't even figured yourself out as it is and no one can tell you that but you. You’re probably just scared to have sex because losing your virginity has obviously always meant a lot to you. Your insecurity about his experience is most likely psychologically manifesting within your clairvoyance… cause your powers mostly reflect your emotional state and state of mind. Ergo your attachment to the person you want to be closest to gets blocked by your diffidence, one of the many downsides to having a body full of emotions you can’t control. Nothing is stopping you from getting dicked down but you, guy. After you separate your morose orientation from delectation, pánta reí. Morosa ex delectatio forsit est, blah blah blah. Etcetera. Etcetera. There’s your fucking advice.”_

 

This is why talking to Lux feels like therapy. He reveals to Liam exactly what he’s feeling before Liam even fully knows what it is that’s bothering him… like he can read into the subconscious workings of Liam’s inner mind.

 

He’s said some of that last part in words Liam shouldn’t understand but… Liam thinks he does. He’s said part of it before, when he was telling Liam about his fascination with death in humanity. He thinks he understands what it means now, even if Lux can’t seem to put it in English.

 

Liam’s problem is within himself. It’s just a matter of letting it go. Then he can go with the flow freely. Greek and Latin was actually growing on Liam. He likes the way they speak it.

 

But his flow feels like it’s being interrupted by more than just a mental block.

 

When Liam looks down at the ground, Lux sits up a little, growing curious with Liam sulky attitude.

 

_“Unless… this isn’t totally about sex…?”_

 

Liam fidgets with his hands a little.

 

 _“Ohhh come on. You can tell me. I can keep a secret.”_ Lux coaxes.

 

Liam is aware. He keeps lots of secrets. While Zayn’s hair has been full of secrets, Lux’s mirror is fraught with them. Liam figures it won’t hurt if he gives him more as he continues to spill his guts into the glass.

 

_“I just think… maybe if I learned how to use my power properly, he wouldn’t have to sit here and babysit me all day.”_

 

 _“You think he feels obligated to spending time with you?”_ Lux tilts his head, which is a relief.

 

Lux asking Liam what he thinks assures him he can’t read his mind. It feels like he can sometimes but… Liam’s glad moments like this assure that he can’t. He’s just really smart.

 

Liam’s thoughts are about the only thing of his Lux can’t touch. Just like when Zayn blocks him out of his own thoughts in his head unless he lets Lux see them. Liam kind of wonder if Zayn can see Lux’s thoughts.

 

 _“No… I know he doesn’t. It’s just… we stay in this room all day long and I know he wants to have sex but I just…_ can’t _, for some reason. I mean, it IS probably just psychological like you said cause my stupid brain is a piece of--”_

 

 _“Li.”_ Lux warns him off finishing that. Liam rolls his eyes.

 

 _“And anyways, even if we NEVER have sex, he still never leaves the house and I know he’s supposed to be out there trying to find another portal before the full moon but he’s NOT cause he’s too afraid to leave me alone here. I just feel like I’m… I’m…”_ He can’t even find the right words for what’s truly bothering him about this entire situation.

 

 _“Wasting his time?”_ Lux finished for him. Liam sighs deeply. That’s exactly how he feels.

 

 _“Yeah.”_ He nods honestly. He hasn’t got a lot of time as it is.

 

Lux laughs as he sits up all the way and leans over window facing Liam now, shaking his head as he slumps over on his knees, leaning his head sideways on one arm.

 

_“He’s not “wasting his time” by being with you. Just because you’re not having sex doesn’t mean you’re wasting time… sex isn’t everything. It can actually ruin relationships in some cases.”_

 

Liam’s head shoots up as he quirks inquisitive eyebrows at him, which makes Lux laugh.

 

 _“Yeah I know,_ shocking _coming from the incubus. Sure getting your ass hammered into a wall is really… nice…”_

 

If he could see him right now, he knows Lux would be wiggling his eyebrows at him as his voice trails off into nothing.

 

Liam bites down hard on his stomach flipping over when Lux casually alludes to when they had sex. He just _loves_ subtly reminding him. Or bluntly. He doesn’t follow a consistent pattern. Depends on the mood. And his mood fluctuates… quite sporadically, like an extremely bipolar person with a few split personalities. He could be angry and aloof in one instant, then totally calm and soft again in the next. Like right now.

 

_“... but that’s not the only way to be close to someone or really feel them on an intimately, deep level. Sex isn’t always intimate. Sex is sex. Complicated sex. Angry sex. Sex in vain… pointless sex… you known, sex. You’ve done it enough to know at least a little. Sometimes something as simple as a conversation with someone can take you deeper into them than what sex ever could.”_

 

Liam’s body heats up. He’s not sure if Lux is actually doing this on purpose or not, getting him hot all over with his words.  Or with his silence as he pauses, watching Liam shiver on the other side, which makes Liam heat up even more. Cause he can _feel_ him staring at him. Lux can see him but Liam can’t see Lux and it sends a wave of nerves slinking through him like a tide. After the small wave leaves finally, Lux continues, assuring Liam that he most definitely knows what he’s doing to him.

 

_“He’s got plenty of time to find a portal. He just doesn’t want anything horrible to happen to you. You being here is good for us. He wasn’t sleeping at all before you got here and now he’s sleeping like a fucking angel.”_

 

Liam looks back at Zayn again, leaning back against the bed. Lux said good for _us_. So he thinks Liam’s presence is good for him too. Liam continues to suppress the flutters in his tummy and denies his urge to ask what he’s good about him being here for Lux.

 

If anything, his presence is just an annoying _burden_ for Lux. He’s stuck in a glass because of Liam and he can’t get away from Liam nagging him constantly. That’s why he thinks Lux enjoys talking more than he lets on. He loves playing 20 questions but he never answers questions directly. He’s such a _contraction_ and it drives Liam insane.

 

“I still just… want us to be _closer_ without my powers getting in the way of it.”

 

Lux gets up suddenly then, gliding over to the mirror so fast, Liam actually jumps at his abruptness, stopping just short of coming out of the shadow like always.

 

 _“Okay sweet, you want something, I want something. We can help each other out right now,”_ Lux says quietly as his tone falls into suggestion - a suggestion Liam isn’t sure he’s gonna like cause he only knows of two things Lux could possibly want from him.

 

Either his soul… or his dick. And he’s already told Liam which one he’d prefer. Multiple times. Lux goes on with his proposition anyways.

 

_“Like you’ve just said, you don’t know how to control your powers very well so if something happens to you here and we’re gone, you won’t even be able to help yourself. Demons come and go here constantly. Not everyone is a friendly as me.”_

 

Liam nods slowly as he processes his voiceless words. Lux isn’t very friendly at all so that just gives him the assurance that meeting anyone else really might end his life.

 

Usually, Lux is really calm and almost totally emotionless aside from the random outbursts on occasion that don’t really last for longer than a few seconds so Liam was inclined to believe he couldn’t feel much emotion without a body but right now… Liam’s feeling the strain in him trying _act_ calm.

 

 _“Then why don’t you just tell me how to use my powers?”_ Liam says carefully.

 

 ** _“Because I’ll have to come out of this fucking mirror and GUIDE you,”_** He hisses, the source of the tension in his vibe surfacing as he kicks at the solid glass with his knee in frustration.

 

 _“You wanna learn how to use your power, he has to let me out. You will_ never _leave this room if I stay in here any longer and I can’t control that.”_

 

_Quid pro quo._

 

The fact alone that this feels like talking to Mikey right now assures Liam that this is a horrible idea that will end badly.

 

_“You're not even clairvoyant, how can you help me with anything?”_

 

_“I know someone that can HELP you withyourfuckingproblem. That’s not the onlypoweryou have to work on if youever want to learnhowtocontrol yourself. All I havetodo is get OUT of here.”_

 

“ _Luxie why are you talking like that…”_ Liam shakes his head in confusion. Lux is talking so fast it's barely registering, like only so much of his words are making it through the glass now, getting clumped and stuck together.

 

 _“Why?”_ He repeats incredulously.

 

 _“I’ve never been in one of these before. Do you think it’s EASY being_ **_TRAPPED_ ** _in this thing?”_ He snaps again as his form glitches in the shadow, talking more clear again.

 

_“Conversation is great Liam. I can get just as much out of it as I can abstain from sex. It’s the only reason I’m not a fucking ANIMAL right now. I can do celibacy just fine from almost anything if you give me time to learn how to abstain. Abstinence takes YEARS of commitment and discipline. I have never been in one of these things in my life, I can’t just be THRUSTED in here all at once and caged up like a fucking WILD ANIMAL. Abstinence takes TIME. It’s great you find comfort in confiding in me or whatever but I will go out of my FUCKING MIND if I don’t get OUT of here and go outside. I haven’t felt ANYTHING in 2 weeks and I’m STARVING. Unless you want to see me AND ZAYN turn into a scary monster and break myself out--”_

 

 _“Alright,”_ Liam says quickly with his hands up, jitters running up his spine as he thinks about what the “scary monster” looks like for a starving Lux.

 

He’s already warned Liam that he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from killing him if he lost control of himself. Cause Liam is the most vulnerable thing in his vicinity.

 

Lux goes back to the window, hunching over angrily as he pulls his knees up to his chest, staring out the window with half of his face buried.

 

 _“I know you can hear me you fucking piece of shit,_ moecha putida. _”_ he hisses quietly as fire skids across his body, down his bare arms. Liam wonders if Zayn can feel that. Cause he can smell his skin _burning_ and it's a sickening smell that makes Liam want to throw up. He’s smelled enough burning people in his life.

 

 _“You want to keep treating me like a beast, locking me in vanitas and acting like a fucking cunt, I show you a BEAST Nars_ **_.”_ ** He growls lowly to himself in the window sill.

 

Or maybe he really is talking to Zayn. Cause Lux can still make Zayn hear him in his head, even if he’s asleep. Liam gulps. He’s definitely not joking. Lux doesn’t play with his pit. It’s about the only thing he doesn’t fuck around on.

 

He went to sleep after Lux said that last night, climbing back in bed, replacing the pillow Zayn was holding onto with him, a little afraid as he curled into him.

 

Even Lux himself gave Liam the same warning Zayn did a few days ago, telling him to get far away from him, even if it’s just seemingly Zayn, if his eyes go wild and dark when Zayn wants to have sex. Cause it might not be Zayn in his right mind and they never know when it’ll go too far and unleash that feral demon, especially with them being hungry like this.

 

That was Lux’s condition when he let Liam stay here. Relieving his hunger everyday like how Louis was doing before they crashed in. If Liam doesn’t… someone else will have to. Demons gotta eat everyday too. A large part of it is sexual. Until the moon cycle comes full circle. Then the hunger comes fully alive to feed on flesh in a more... bloodier fashion.

 

It didn’t used to be like that for Lux.

 

Not a lot of _live_ humans ever come here. So he’d never met a human before Liam. Niall was nearly dead when he almost ate him.

 

Liam asked him why he didn't kill Niall when he was clearly starving but Lux refuses to ever talk about that night. He gets the feeling Lux might be afraid of what happened to him when he woke up in Zayn. He can imagine he was very confused but… Lux was totally different when Liam first seen him. Maybe it was because Liam was kind of blind and his body was covered in ash but… something was very wrong with Lux when he came to his house that Liam can’t explain. He wasn’t a total beast… but he wasn’t himself either.

 

Liam thinks Lux doesn’t talk about it because turning into a beast scares him. Why else would he have run away from Liam instead of eating him that night?

 

Lux didn’t eat people before because aether exists outside of the human soul everywhere.

 

In the time of Zayn’s past life, the every element of nature were always personified as Gods.

 

Time was a god called Cronos. Earth was a goddess called Gaea. The sea was the goddess Thalassa and the river was Cephissus, Nars’ dad. Uranus was the heavens, and so on and so forth.

 

The air that only Gods could breathe was personified as, Aether. A type of element that comes in many forms, whether it’s in the human soul, fire, earth, water, or the air. Since different forms of it exist in between every dimension of every space in the universe, Lux was only allowed to eat that.

 

Like a vampire that’s diet might only consist of drinking negative O blood from people who weigh exactly 59 kilograms. Or a werewolf that only eats kibble from high end brands.

 

In other words, Lux’s brother has always raised him on a very restricted, very _specific_ diet right down to the very grain and make. He didn't want Lux to go around draining people of life like a delinquent wild-child like most demons do.

 

Lux only ate the kind of aether that's squeezed out of highly concentrated hellfire from the higher regions of space that goes beyond the storming sky here. Hot like hellfire but not quite hellfire itself.

 

Basically, the only thing Lux has ever eaten is a palpable form of fire that’s probably hotter than the sun itself. He’s the only one that can get sustenance from that cause that’s what’s given him life in the first place. It’s not quite a soul. But it almost is, which is what confuses the hell out of Liam about the mirror. Cause Lux doesn’t have his kakos in there yet that’s supposed to be the core of his existence. But Lux doesn’t answer him when he asks how he can be a demon and talk without his lust. Lux doesn’t talk to Liam about being a reflection at all.

 

The logical thing to think is that it’s because Zayn is chained to the mirror when he’s there so as long as Zayn is alive, Lux will be too. So how will destroying it get rid of Lux? Liam can’t ask cause Lux will never answer.

 

Sex was just a personal choice for Lux although, Liam isn’t entirely sure how that plays into the hunger with him. Lux loves talking about sex but he doesn’t talk about what comes if he _doesn’t_ have sex or eat.

 

Apparently, aether when it’s raw isn’t as good as an actual soul. No taste. No texture. Like swallowing hot air. But it’s kept his pit breathing so that was all that really mattered. And sex in it’s _rawest_ form how Lux likes it doesn’t feel as sensational without a body. The all you can fuck buffet on the surface was probably like finding a goldmine to Lux.

 

But now as of late, Lux hasn’t been getting any love at all. Cause Zayn _hates_ Lux.

 

Their relationship is _by far_ the most complex thing Liam is sure he’ll ever see in his life. Listening to them talk to each other when their not cursing each other is kind of fascinating, even if they never really speak in English so Liam won’t understand.

 

The weird thing about them is… Zayn hates Lux but Lux doesn’t really hate Zayn. Lux _says_ he does but Liam doesn’t think he really hates Zayn. Liam knows Zayn hates him for sure. He said he's looked at himself his entire life and wanted the person on the otherside to die from how badly he couldn't stand looking at him, cause it felt like he was looking at nothing. It terrifies Liam that Zayn has felt like that. Now that Lux is really there, he wants him to die even moreto the point where he's actually gonna kill him and Liam thinks it hurts Lux that Zayn looks at him and wants him to die. He doesn't have to say it hurts. Some things can just be felt without having to say a word.

 

They go at each other constantly with burning, _explosive_ passion and being forced together like this is growing more hostile everyday but Liam honestly thinks Lux hates that _Zayn_ hates _him_ more than anything else.

 

He doesn’t know why but… he just gets the feeling that Lux wanted Zayn to like him just a badly as _everybody_ wants Zayn to like them. Cause he’d never met him before and he probably wondered why he left without saying anything just like the rest of Zayn's demons did. Just cause he’s a demon doesn’t mean he’s immune to Zayn’s natural attraction. It doesn’t matter who you are. Everyone always wants Zayn in some kind of way. And Liam is sure Lux wouldn’t mind the idea of sex with Zayn if it were possible.

 

In fact… Lux probably feels it more than anyone in the world. Even Liam. But that’s just Liam’s theory. He _does_ wonder how their first actual meeting went down though.

 

The current situation isn’t going to work for much longer at all.

 

If Zayn and Lux could kill each other, they would right now. And it’d be dirty and bloody and full of torn out guts and spleens. Liam thinks he might be part of the reason. Cause Zayn’s still bitter about all the times Lux has seduced Liam and his response to them living together has been to lock Lux away from him and _starve_ him. So of course, if Lux doesn’t comes out soon, shit will go down.

 

Liam is sure Zayn knows he can’t keep Lux in a mirror all day and all night forever. He's basically _torturing_ Lux to be honest which isn't a smart move to torture a _demon_. Cause Lux will go savage and tear into a rampage once the glass containing him breaks.

 

There's laws here in Lust that can't be broken. Hell is in levels like this for that reason specifically. It’s like levels in a video game. The further you get, the harder it is to get through the level. In terms of survival.

 

The closer to the surface you are, the stricter the law is and the safer the environment is. The deeper in the abyss… the less the law exists, making it more dangerous the lower you go.

 

In Lust, it is taboo to take death into your own hands. Death in hell is different than death on the surface.

 

While demons can go to the surface and kill as many humans as they want, if they kill other beings here in Lust, they get sent to deeper depths of hell. Liam doesn’t know _who_ the boss of that is here cause there are keepers on each respective level. The keeper to the underworld in it’s entirety is Death itself.

 

On the surface, human souls get to move on once death has taken them. Even if Charon brings them here. But once you're _here_ , death means total destruction unless you’re actually immortal. No rebirth. No afterlife. No moving on. No second chances. Total _oblivion._ Ava didn’t know that Liam was a demon when he tried to eat his soul. He could’ve killed himself _and_ Liam.

 

The only one allowed to tamper with that with content is the keeper of all keepers who lurks around every corner of every plane where you can't hide. Cause the one thing in life you can be certain of is that death will find you.

 

One of Lux’s siblings proved that law to be real.

 

If Liam can sense Lux’s impending beast mode, then Zayn can too. And if that happens…. someone is dying. _Liam._

 

Even if Zayn is immortal, he’s not above the law. If Lux kills Liam here he doesn’t know _what_ will happen to him and Zayn.

 

So long explanation short, Liam is thinking maybe Lux coming out for a while isn’t such an illogical idea. There’s worse things that can happen if he doesn’t. And he offered to help Liam learn how to use his powers. But Lux _will_ go and have sex as soon as he comes out and Liam doesn’t like the idea of him going off with randoms, letting just _anyone_ fuck Zayn. It’s just all very… _conflicting_.

 

Liam’s phone rings again as he's in bed alone waiting for Zayn to come back with a tired sigh as he turns over on his side, turning Lux’s words from last night over in his head again and again.

 

It's Harry again, as promised. Thankfully this time, he’s not pissed off so Liam figures his mother finally left him alone.

 

_“Sophia Miller. 19 year old necromancer from the London Borough of Bromley, central hiding borough in the south of the LDN for a cult of satanists that have adopted the following of the Amarna heresy. Actually, it started in Manningtree but after the necromancy crisis most fled to West Central London and North West… and South. Basically, I’m staying the fuck AWAY from London.”_

 

“What?” Liam groans. He is way too worn out for Harry’s language right now.

 

_“Your girlfriend mate.”_

 

Liam rubs his eyes tiredly. Sophia keeps making appearances in his life even in HELL.

 

 _“Me and Benjamin have been doing some research. Turns out her fake I. D. really IS fake. But she lives alone and she doesn’t cover her tracks very well… or lock her door. The Miller’s come from a coven that joined a flock of_ other _covens to form a cult called “Amarna Horizon” that’s been around for a few centuries. They follow an ancient religion called Atenism that consists of worship to the morning star, something that’s been around since ancient Egypt… basically since the beginning of civilization.”_

 

“Harry how do you know all this?” Liam asks worriedly. He’s dealing with _murderous_ people on the surface right now.

 

“You have to be careful! She knows that you _know,_ don’t talk to her. She can manipulate you and hurt you! If she's leaving trail she’s not covering, it's probably so you _can_ follow her!”

 

_“Well it’s a little late for that. She came to ME anyways for her dumb monkey’s paw a few hours ago.”_

 

“What happened?!?” Liam sits up quickly, feeling sick at the thought of something happening to Harry.

 

_“I told her I used it all on money and drugs so… she believed me. Hasn’t bothered me since. I’m with Ben and Tony since I’m sort of holding them hostage at the moment. Benny helped me hack her computer we… borrowed.”_

 

“Harry!” Liam covers his forehead with his hand, over his eyes. He was so smart but so _stupid_.

 

“These are WITCHES you can’t just be so _casual_ with this stuff, she could be 10 steps ahead of you--”

 

 _“Actually, she’s more than a witch.”_ Harry gets back into details and Liam can hear him tapping away on what is probably Sophia’s stolen laptop, hearing Ben and Anthony arguing in the back about who gets to drive the car while Mikey is wailing Green Day lyrics.

 

_“These psychopaths don’t fly around on brooms or wave magic wands. They hunt human beings and put hexes on them and hold hands in the woods while they surround them as they say gregorian chants to conjure demons and spirits in Latin liturgy under the full moon. I’m NOT being casual about this. But we’ve been hotboxing in the car for a while so I’m a little off my ass but I honestly think that helps charge my aura, you know? I’m pretty sure it immunes me from anything her kind of necromancy can do. Sophia’s not as skilled as someone like Eggsy. She’s just a hunter.”_

 

 _“Babe, I’m sober. I’m definitely driving the rest of the way,”_ Liam hears Ben coaxing gently in the background, followed of course _by---_

 

_“Levati dai coglioni! I’m already behind the motherfucking wheel do you want me to drive us into a goddamn ditch? What if I hit a pregnant woman huh? You want that shit on your conscious Ben?”_

 

 _\---_ Anthony’s usual _parolacce._ Italian bad words.

 

Harry covers the phone as his voice is muffled.

 

_“Can you guys like… not kill us?”_

 

Liam doesn't know how Harry can be so relaxed and retain so much information with the chaos always surrounding him. Well… he’s relaxed cause he’s high but _still_. He gets back on the phone after settling a brief disagreement.

 

 _“As I was saying,”_ He hisses in annoyance. “ _The Amarna Heresy hadn’t been around for thousands of years until the morning star was revealed to be here in Manningtree around 400 years ago,”_

 

“Amarna heresy?” Liam repeats as he squints.

 

_“Oh right sorry, context. Heresy is like breaking the law, not believing etc. That’s the 6th level of hell. Amarna was a city in Ancient Egypt. It means “Horizon of the Aten”. Aten is the sun… so like the horizon of the sun was in Amarna. The Amarna Heresy was the banishment of worshipping any Gods that weren’t of the sun God, Ra in ancient Egypt. Also known as Atenism. It’s just a really old religious belief. Calling their cult the Amarna horizon is just a play on words, you know cause the horizon is where the sky touches Earth, where God can contact humans. Where the sun sets and rises. The horizon Liam--”_

 

“Okay I get it!” Liam rolls his eyes in annoyance when Harry starts repeating himself in de trop like Liam doesn’t understand basic English. He knows what a fucking horizon is.

 

“So… she worships the sun? Big deal.”

 

_“Yes BIG DEAL. God of the sun lives in Heresy Liam, like how Adonis lives in Lust. Ra of the sun is also called the morning star. Actually… he’s got a lot of names.”_

 

“What’s so special about worshipping a sun God?”

 

_“The morning star is another name for Lucifer Liam. Like the devil. This religious belief has turned itself into satanism for these occults.”_

 

Liam is confused as to why Harry is telling him this like this is brand new information.

 

“I thought we already were aware of this?”

 

_“Yeah but now WE know stuff no one else does. That “morning star” that revealed itself wasn’t just some kind of random demon from hell. Something evil crawled out of that house 400 years ago some witches thought was the “morning star” cause it was on fire and looked like the “sun,”. They’re not worshipping him, they’ve been able to make deals with it by using human sacrifices in exchange for whatever they want ever since. Quid pro fucking quo Liam.”_

 

“I’m not seeing where the new information is here Haz. We already know Zayn’s demons escape through the portal.”

 

_“You’re not LISTENING to me! This wasn’t one of Zayn’s demons. They are the becoming the LEAST of our problems right now. They can’t leave without a body. Something ELSE came out first from Heresy that didn’t need a body to get out in. It literally sparked the necromancy crisis. Like an explosion. This is their “God”.”_

 

“I thought you said it was the devil?”

 

_“Calling something “the devil” is a very broad. The keeper of the underworld can be called the devil. Demons can be called devils. This says the God of dark magic, A.K.A. necromancy, and King of demons is a devil from Heresy they called the morning star thousands of years ago, which also happens to be the same premise of the sun God, Ra, in the city, Amarna in ancient Egypt around the same time, which is where “magic” is thought to be first originated from. Black magic. It's probably the same thing, the name just keeps changing over time.”_

 

“You think this demon-God they’re worshipping lived in Ancient Egypt?”

 

_“Maybe… this says that Ancient Egyptians believed that Ra of the sun was swallowed everyday by the night sky and reborn every morning at the horizon in Amarna. What's that sound like to you?”_

 

A creepy chill moves through Liam. Zayn used to tell Liam stories about something like that when they were kids, about the sun closing its eyes everyday for the moon. Liam was always the day and Zayn was the night.

 

Liam wonders how much Zayn has really known about _all of this._ Because a coincidence is never a coincidence in this life for them.

 

Zayn doesn’t seem to know concrete things. But the vague ideas he’s said to Liam about random things have turned out to be not so random. Maybe he didn’t really lose _any_ memories from the past. They seem to have just rearranged themselves in his head. Zayn’s always had a very colourful mind. Now it seems as though he’s been unknowingly visiting old cobwebs that have always been in the attic of his memory like dreams that have transformed into nightmares in real time.

 

“The sun setting and rising so the night could fall…” Liam murmurs.

 

The sun is a type of _star_ afterall. But what Harry is talking about is also person… or a _God_. Now that he knows star people might really exist… goosebumps spread up his arms chillingly.

 

 _“Exactly.”_ Harry continues.

 

_“Suns don’t come out at night like regular stars. This sun God could only live on the surface in the daylight. As the story goes, at night when he was gone, he travelled through the underworld until the morning, hence the name. But he disappeared from Earth for thousands of years. The sun didn’t literally get swallowed by the night sky. The sky in this story is supposed to be a metaphor for the heavens. Heaven is on a very fast, loose astral plane, with Gods and angels and shit. Our world is like a middle ground where the horizon exists on Earth’s plane with humans. Hell is below Earth’s surface on a slow etheric plane with the evil shit. This map I’m looking at shows the sky, our world and the underworld can all be connected at certain points, like at a horizon when the sky touches Earth. Then the vanitas where hell touches Earth. Twice a year, they all align like a tunnel. September 22 and March 20.”_

 

 _“The equinox…”_ Liam murmurs. He only knows that because he was actually supposed to be born on the fall equinox in September but he came a few weeks earlier in August.

 

_“Yes. The equinox, where night and day meet equally when the sun crosses the plane of Earth’s equator. That was the day High Tide made their grand sacrifice, which we know they’re finishing on Halloween. That would’ve been the only day this guy could be on all 3 planes at once. He didn’t need a body to go wherever he wanted. All he needed was the “horizon”. He’s coming back on HALLOWEEN. Are you following this?”_

 

Liam nods until he remembers Harry can’t see that.

 

“Yes, I’m following.”

 

He’s saying this sun God didn’t need a body to travel across whatever plane he wanted. He just needed points to get around. Points like portals and gateways that lead anywhere. Light can travel anywhere. Even if darkness destroys light. You can’t destroy a God. But you can’t touch one either.

 

During equinoctial points _everything can touch each other._ The night can touch the day. Moonlight can touch sunlight. And Gods can touch humans.

 

_“All this is solid proof that some kind of God lived on the surface in Amarna back then that went back and forth from hell and Earth and heaven at least twice a year. Stars come from the sky. Some stars are angels. Some are fallen angels. The actual Christian bible literally says Satan, also known as the fucking Morning Star, was a fallen angel from heaven himself before he was struck down, falling into hell on Earth. I think it’s obvious he didn’t need a body to go wherever he wanted. All he needed was a gateway. He contacted humans frequently cause there was a portal that existed in Amarna that connected Heresy to Egypt called a “Horizon”. He could go to Hell and Earth everyday. But he couldn’t at night. He could go ANYWHERE during the Equinox. The portal must’ve been closed for thousands of years though since he got stuck in hell. Fast forward to our time, another gateway exactly like the one described to have existed in Egypt is created that leads Manningtree to Lust called a “Vanitas”. 400 years ago, the morning star pops back up on Earth’s surface again like a fucking whack-a-mole. In Manningtree. And suddenly witches are gathering all over the bloody woods and exchanging favours with him with teenaged human bodies, roasting our asses alive with black magic, stabbing us in our fucking HEARTS and recklessly throwing us in a bottomless pit where bodiless demons then used to escape and go to town on us more, blah blah now we’re caught up.”_

 

Liam has a short break in reality as he stares at himself in the mirror. He keeps listening to Harry while zoned out.

 

_“The more sacrifices you make, the better your deal is. The first known person to do this specific kind of exchange in the Enchiridion was NARCISSUS since he sacrificed 7 parts of his teenaged body for immortality. I think that counts as a virgin sacrifice. I don’t think he could… you know, fuck a STAR so he was most likely a virgin too. This isn't the first time this being has been on Earth. Zayn didn’t start this… but his curse brought THAT to Earth again which is why he’s credited so heavily in the Enchiridion. I don’t know why Sophia was going after you but I’m pretty sure she knew who Zayn was. He’s in her granddad’s book for fucks sake she’s not stupid. He got put in a trance after looking Eggsy in the eye… they HAD to have known who he was. Maybe they wanted both of you but there was some kind of miscommunication. I think she might’ve told them you were the virgin they needed but they must’ve thought she meant Zayn was also a virgin like you said? Like two birds, one stone type of deal? Obviously I’m not gonna go ask her what the actual agenda was but that’s just my guess. Seems logical anyways.”_

 

Liam’s eyes tear up as he covers his face with his arm. Who does everyone come for when they’re going for Zayn?

 

If it was really supposed to be Zayn the entire time, then Sophia never would’ve gotten anywhere with Zayn. Well… she _tried._ She infiltrated his tight circle first by joined cheerleading and became close friends with Perrie, which was the wrong half of Zayn's favourite girlfriends to get close to anyways but Jade kept to herself so she had to stick with Perrie… which she did. That was what Liam found the most bizarre about her suddenly being interested in him. Cause Perrie hates him. Now it _really_ makes sense why she pursued Liam. He’s a better pawn to use than Perrie or even Jade. Plus added bonus, he was a fucking _virgin_.

 

It wouldn’t take very long for someone to find out that Liam was the school virgin or know that he came with Zayn like a packaged deal. Cause if you hang out with Liam, you’re probably gonna be with Zayn too. Liam was a _perfect_ target.

 

“Harry why are you a genius?” Liam mumbles.

 

_“Cause I’m a fucking indigo luv. I sense shit.”_

 

Liam rolls his eyes. He’s really been wearing out that term lately.

 

_“Anyways, this Demon-God they sacrificed him to, it isn’t clear if he even still lives in Heresy. He might live in Lust now. These archives aren’t really consistent since humans don’t usually go to hell and come back to share horror stories and what not. You’re in a better position to find more information about him in hell than me up here. Just talk to Tony… or Ace. Maybe they know him.”_

 

“I can’t talk to them, I never leave the _room._ And I don’t know anything about any of this crazy shit,let alone have a conversation about it with them!”

 

 _“God I wish we could just trade places…. This would be SO much easier.”_ Harry sighs and Liam feels really bad again cause Harry’s right. Liam is in one of the most famous world’s known to man and he’s completely useless to help with anything.

 

 _“But this isn’t rocket science.”_ Harry perks back up a little after his momentary lapse in frustration with being unable to dig as deep as he really wants to in hell. Cause he’ll die here.

 

_“Seeing that fucking ADONIS has been coming and going in the underworld like it’s his favourite vacay hot spot since he was a child, this God might move around a bit too. I mean, he could be someone disguised as a human in Manningtree for all we fucking know. Zayn’s demons had to have been inspired by SOMETHING to get such a sickening idea.”_

 

That reminds Liam when Lux said he’s been having sex since God was a child. Maybe he was talking about Adonis. Time isn’t consistent here. Who knows how “old” Adonis actually is.

_  
  
_

“Can a God really be a demon?” Liam wonders out loud after a small pause, feeling Harry’s new discoveries trying to resonate in him.

_  
  
_

_“Dunno… I didn’t even know Gods lived in hell like that. Obviously, there's probably all kinds of things there we will never know about on Earth… probably shouldn't know about. There’s an old saying about that. “Sed Deus non potest a Diabolo,” “but God can not be the devil.” Whatever the fuck came out of that vanitas 400 years ago is the literal origin of black magic and is probably as old as time itself. He’s definitely been keeping his promise to his fully grown following of little devil worshippers for the last 400 years. Zayn HAS to close it. His fucking soul has kept this on Earth. As long as the Vanitas is open, hell will always be forever connected to Earth and every time the equinox happens, EVERYTHING will be connected. Demons and wicked witches and all this evil shit being linked together for this long… he’s the only one that can put an end to it forever. You have to be careful Liam, seriously. This came out of THAT house and it’s probably still alive and VERY powerful and it’s coming back there in a few days because that is the only way out of hell without the equinox. Don’t go ANYWHERE without Zayn. This is no fucking joke.”_

_  
  
_

Liam stares at himself blankly in the mirror. Zayn’s never gonna leave the house as long as Liam is here.

_  
  
_

_“Are you there?”_

_  
  
_

“Yeah.” Liam nods slowly.

_  
  
_

_“... are you sure you can’t come home Liam?”_ Harry sighs. _“A year is a really long time. ANYTHING could happen there. There’s skype and telephones that’ll definitely work there. You can still visit everyday. You can stay with Ben and Tony if you’re afraid of your parents y’know… I just want you to be safe.”_

_  
  
_

“I’ll let you know.” Liam says, unsure. Lux said the house was safe. Well… it’s _not_ but. He said he’s safe with _him._ Which Liam truly believes. He doesn’t think Lux could ever kill him. Even as a beast. If he could, he would’ve the night of the fire.

_  
  
_

The surface wasn't any better than here as far as safety goes. There's deadly witches and demons up there too, hiding in plain sight.

_  
  
_

He doesn’t know if it’s safe for anyone if he stayed now though. Cause he _is_ distracting Zayn. What if he doesn’t close the portal and find a new one before the full moon because of Liam?

_  
  
_

_“Alright Li. We’re gonna be on the look-out on the surface. Keep an eye on Sophia. Try to get as many people not go to the dance as possible. Mikey agreed to throw a party the day before and get everyone hammered so no one goes to the dance the next day. ”_

_  
  
_

If Mikey was having a party… everyone was _definitely_ coming and getting out of their minds. There might be a few casualties. Better than the entire population of youth being burned alive though.

_  
  
_

“Harry _please_ be careful. Follow your stupid peyote-acid-charged senses.”

_  
  
_

Liam keeps getting the awful feeling that something terrible is about to happen soon on the surface if he keeps fucking with Sophia and he doesn’t dismiss these feelings anymore. She’s a skilled hunter and the number one thing of the hunt is entrapping your prey.

_  
  
_

After some persistence, she got Liam. He can’t even remember how they started dating anymore but whatever she did, it worked.

_  
  
_

If she's letting Harry get that kind of information, where it's leading to could be a trap.

_  
  
_

_“You too bud. Just_ don’t _follow your gut,yeah?”_

_  
  
_

“Okay.”

_  
  
_

_“And don't fuck Lux.”_

_  
  
_

“Goodbye Harry.” Liam rolls his eyes.

_  
  
_

_“I’ll see you tomorrow.”_

_  
  
_

_Hope so._

_  
  
_

That’s a little less than 3 or so weeks for Liam.

_  
  
_

After hanging up, Liam lays back down, almost hiding under the cover.

_  
  
_

As he looks at himself in the mirror and reflects on everything, he starts considering if he should just save all this trouble for Zayn. Simply suck it up and go home, even if Zayn doesn’t want him to go. Maybe he _needs_ to.

_  
  
_

There’s more than way too much shit here that one person can handle alone, let alone have an excess _boy candy_ laying in his bed, distracting him in the midst of it too. Cause closing a portal is way harder than opening one. Zayn’s opened in the worst way ever and they don’t have time to mess around like how they are now cause they only have one single chance.

_  
  
_

The full moon falling on the end of the harvest season is fucking rare. But it’s not a coincidence cause it’s the last harvest season before Zayn turns 18. It seriously seems like all the shit in the universe is colliding all at once like this _specifically_ just to make sure Zayn stayed fucked forever. Narcissus had to have really pissed some angry Gods off to have the entire universe against him like this. Attempting suicide wouldn’t get you cursed. Even _death_ liked him enough to grant him immunity to it. He had to have done something to someone _else._ Maybe his regrets weren’t the deal he made _._ Maybe he regretted befouling whatever God cursed him in the first place.

_  
  
_

As far as they know now, Zayn’s past life tried to take mortality in his own mortal hands somehow and he landed himself in a mess that he only has 11 days to clean up. But Zayn doesn’t give a shit about that cause all he’s focused on anymore is _Liam._

_  
  
_

If he went home now, Zayn wouldn’t be distracted by Liam anymore, Lux wouldn’t be starved in the mirror constantly anymore… but Liam would never see him again as he is now.

_  
  
_

He wishes Lux would just go _away sooner._ Not to go and _die_ just… help Zayn with his shit and go live his life separate from Zayn like they were. The chain binding them to the mirror _on top of it all_ is just…

_  
  
_

Liam sighs.

_  
  
_

_It’s just too much for Zayn._

_  
  
_

Liam _wishes_ he could mean all that but deep down, Liam doesn’t want Lux to really go away completely either. Afterall, he was _helping_ them.

_  
  
_

Even if the idea of them ever remaining friends is completely stupid, he won’t lie and say he doesn’t wish that were possible. And he definitely doesn’t want _anyone_ to die. Everything is just so _fucked_ and he can’t stand it.

_  
  
_

So, he leaves his body for a while as he waits for Zayn, leaving the turmoil and confused feelings behind for now. He spaces out as he watches himself in the mirror, staring at himself until he drifts away completely and it looks like there's no one in it at all anymore.

_  
  
_

Liam squints as he sits up slowly, staring into the mirror closely. He can still see himself but… he’s still laying down. Even when he gets up and approaches it, he’s still lying down. There’s no one in it as he stands _right in front of it._

_  
  
_

Liam looks behind him and gasps faintly when he sees his surroundings. _Everything_ around him is warped and smudged.

_  
  
_

He instinctively reaches for his missing pants pocket for his glasses before he remembers he doesn’t have them anymore. He obviously hasn’t needed them in weeks but right now, his sight is horrible all over again. But it looks so strange… a familiar strange.

_  
  
_

The fuzzy room looks like everything has been flipped on the opposite side. The only thing he can see clearly is through the mirror where everything looks normal and crisp. And then the realisation ambushes him.

_  
  
_

“Oh my god,” He gasps, moving his hands against the glass. _He’s_ _in the mirror._

_  
  
_

_“Not again,”_ He hisses as he hits his fists against the cracked glass from where Lux has assaulted it many times already. This thing feels like _titanium._ If Lux can crack this, let alone _smash through it completely,_ then Liam feels sorry for whoever tries to fight him. There’s no way in hell Liam can break this from the inside. All his strength is in his body.

_  
  
_

He’s trapped. He can’t remember what he did whenever this happened to him. The last time it happened, he dragged his numb body to Sophia’s house to have senseless sex with all of his nerve endings completely dead. Like maybe he left some of himself in the mirror. And before that, it’d been over a year since he’s got stuck in a mirror like this. It’s happened 4 or 5 times in total. But now that he knows for sure he’s not completely insane and he’s really _inside a_ _mirror_ watching his body curled up under a blanket on the other side… _oh God._

_  
  
_

Liam’s about to panic. Or he would if he was in his body right now but… he can’t feel shit outside of his body. Not even panic.

_  
  
_

He doesn't know how long he stays like this, staring at himself in bed helplessly but eventually, everything around him becomes a blur of spaced out, total oblivion. Cause nothing around him is real. Except for the room on the other side. He’s been stuck like this for over an hour before. When Zayn comes back into the room, Liam's trip with this mirror gets even worse.

_  
  
_

The first thing he does when he walks in the room is find Liam under the cover, seemingly asleep. He has no idea that Liam is wide awake and spacing the fuck out right now.

_  
  
_

Liam quickly dives out of sight, pushing up against the non-existent wall that would be next to the mirror.

_  
  
_

He stares at the nothingness surrounding him as he floats in the small void he’s confined to, listening to his heart beating frantically on the otherside, hearing Zayn talking to Lux in the mirror he’s holding. If Lux comes in here… he doesn’t even know what will happen. He’s not ready to meet Lux face to face like this.

_  
  
_

Liam carefully peaks out again, watching Zayn cleaning up their clothes all over the floor. He doesn’t want to give Zayn a heart attack right now but he knows there’s no kind of build up that will prepare for the inevitable freaking out. He takes a deep breath and crouches in front of the glass cautiously. Before he can even say anything, Lux must see him from the small mirror Zayn’s holding cause Liam hears him before he hears Zayn. Well, he _kind of_ hears him.

_  
  
_

_“Oh my ***!”_ he almost yells, startling Zayn. Liam squints as he only catches a few words.

_  
  
_

_“What *** *** *** quiet *** sleeping,”_ Liam _thinks_ Zayn says he’s sleeping?

_  
  
_

Their voices sound so far away. Like there’s cotton stuffed in Liam’s ears. Being inside a mirror was… _annoying_.

_  
  
_

He can’t hear very well, he can barely see his surroundings cause everything looks warped and he feels like the space is too tight to even move around too much at all. He doesn’t know how Lux has been staying in these things, it’s _awful_.

_  
  
_

Eventually, Zayn sees him. Dread and horror floods his face as he comes up to the mirror in total distress with his hands on the glass.

_  
  
_

_“Li-Liam is that *** ?”_

_  
  
_

Liam shakes his head at Zayn feeling all over the glass.

_  
  
_

“I can’t really hear you!” He yells loudly.

_  
  
_

“I don’t know how I got in but I think I can just push myself out!”

_  
  
_

_“Stop *** SCREAMING I *** *** hear you,”_

_  
  
_

“Oh,” Liam laughs a little.

_  
  
_

_“I leave for 5 *** minutes and *** *** ***,”_ Zayn grumbles in frustration as he picks the smaller mirror floating in front of him out of the air.

_  
  
_

_“How *** *** ***  out?!”_ Liam can’t hear what he asks Lux.

_  
  
_

It looks like he asks _‘How does he get out?’_

_  
  
_

_“You *** me *** *** him out?”_

_  
  
_

_“Obviously! He *** *** hurt!”_

_  
  
_

Liam hates this, watching them argue on the other side in this broken up speech.

_  
  
_

Zayn paces around the room with the sound coming in and out of Liam, like only a few words are able to penetrate through the glass at a time. No wonder Lux sounds so weird in here. His actual voice gets stripped of all sound when it passes through the glass. But Harry told Liam his natural voice probably sounds like that outside of the mirror too.

_  
  
_

“Babe, I think I can get myself out…” Liam says as he looks down at the bottom, careful not to scream this time.

_  
  
_

“I’ve done this before--”

_  
  
_

_“Don’t worry, I *** *** get *** out *** ***.”_ Lux cuts Liam off, probably saying something along the lines of being able to get Liam out himself, which makes him frown.

_  
  
_

“Guys… Z wait don’t!” Liam tries to push himself out and phase through, melt into it, _anything,_ but the glass in too hard. He can’t do anything to stop Zayn from doing what he’s about to do. He’s already bringing Lux back out.

_  
  
_

_“Hurry up *** he fucking *** himself!”_ Zayn yells at him as his eyes roll backwards into his head and Lux gets what he wants. His body.

_  
  
_

_“Finally.”_ He sighs contently as his legs bend up slowly, hovering as he stretches his arms over his head and cracks his neck from side to side.

_  
  
_

After he’s done stretching, the hand mirror floats up in front of him so he fixes his hair for a moment, smiling into it briefly before his right fist shatters it into pieces as he punches right through it.

_  
  
_

If Liam could feel anything right now, he’s sure his face would be draining of all blood. He knows Lux isn’t going back into another mirror ever again. He looks at Liam and smiles.

_  
  
_

“Can you hear me now?” His voice is crystal clear as every word passes through the glass.

_  
  
_

Liam nods.

_  
  
_

“What a clever accident. You look kind of funny in there.”

_  
  
_

“How do I get out?” Liam rushes. He’s feeling claustrophobic in here.

_  
  
_

“I don’t wanna touch you in there cause these hands are pretty dirty right now so back up. This might feel weird but just try to stay relaxed.” He says tucking his lips in as he draws back his fist again.

_  
  
_

“Do you have to smash it?!?” Liam says quickly as he flinches back but it’s so tight he only gets back a few inches. Lux pauses as he looks up a little before he shrugs.

_  
  
_

“No… but _I’m_ not going back in there and it’s obviously dangerous for _you_ so… I think the logical thing to do for _your_ safety is to destroy all the mirrors in this house don’t you think?” He says with a wink.

_  
  
_

Liam shakes his head at him. He knew this would end badly.

_  
  
_

“Now back away darling, unless you want me to punch you in the face.” he gives Liam a sweet smile.

_  
  
_

Liam tries to back away from it, bumping against as invisible barrier behind him where the mirror ends. It’s an actual cage. The space is all an illusion. So when Lux is in here, he’s not really looking at anything but Liam or even moving around at all. Liam hates that. He hates illusions and he hates mirrors even more now.

_  
  
_

He understands now how staying in here will drive him out of his sanity and he feels awful for being the reason Lux is subjected to this everyday. There has to be some kind of compromise.

_  
  
_

He ducks his head into his arms as he braces himself.

_  
  
_

In the next moment, all Liam can hear is the shattering of glass and the complete destruction of the illusion of space around him as he’s sucked into the _actual_ space of their bedroom and thrown back into his body like a lump of feathers settling back down.

_  
  
_

His eyes spring open and he jolts as his nerves all twerk at once the moment he can feel the heat trying to crawl all over his numbed skin again. Lux is leaning over him.

_  
  
_

“You alright?” He smiles.

_  
  
_

Liam covers his face, groaning and rubbing over his eyes. He can’t even feel his hands on his face cause his whole body is completely numb. He needs to stand up to move his limbs, get some sensory reminders into his body to tell it he’s not really dead.

_  
  
_

“I figured you found something off about mirrors that when you said you were _avoiding_ them.” Lux snorts, grabbing Liam hands.

_  
  
_

“You know, I’ve _never_ seen anyone else do anything like that before.” he says thoughtfully as he pulls Liam up out of bed for him since he’s body had gone to sleep on him, the prickly needles keeping him too incapacitated to get up on his own.

_  
  
_

Liam who is still completely naked.

_  
  
_

He forces his numb limbs to move as he quickly covers himself with the blanket, snatching it off the bed and falling over his stiff legs on the floor, wrapping himself up to preserve himself even though it’s pointless. He’d still rather be covered than standing here _naked_ with Lux. That leads to… bad things.

_  
  
_

Lux doesn’t sleep so he only had a bed in his room for one reason.

_  
  
_

He rolls his eyes at Liam.

_  
  
_

“A bit late for modesty don’t you think?”

_  
  
_

“No,” Liam covers his nipples. “Not really, n-no.” He stammers.

_  
  
_

“Not like I haven’t _seen_ it before. Or choked on it… or ridden it. I’m basically forced to _stare_ it every fucking day, not that I’m complaining.” He smirks as he brings Liam back to his feet, a beet red flush spreading from his head to his toes.

_  
  
_

It seems like so much just happened in the blink of an eye. He forgot how confused and unsettled he feels in his body when this happened. His nerves are jumping all over the place as they slowly wake back up one by one as a wave of static spreads inside him, sparking again. And Lux touching him like this right now isn’t helping his nerves to chill the fuck out at all.

_  
  
_

This must be how babies feel when they’re ripped out of the familiar safe havens of the womb, naked and completely unprepared for the world around them. Except Liam was broken out of a mirror, and now his entire life is in the hands of Lux.

_  
  
_

He glides away after making sure Liam is stable on his feet instead of taking advantage of the situation to Liam’s surprise, not even giving Liam a second glance. When he opens the door, Liam panics. Cause he’s _leaving with Zayn’s body_.  

_  
  
_

“Wait!” His hand springs up in front of him as he forces the door back closed from across the room, making Lux pause and look back at him.

_  
  
_

“Something wrong?”

_  
  
_

_Extremely._

_  
  
_

“Uh,” He clutches the blanket around him more securely, holding his head as he squints at the glass all over the floor in total… _confusion_.

_  
  
_

There’s too much happening at once inside him. With everything Harry just told him he was thinking about and being thrust back into his body like that, all the shelves in his brain have dumped out their contents and shattered on the ground like the glass itself, jumbling back up in his blank mind where he’s trying to find a thought where there is none. It feels like a huge chunks of him are missing as everything scrambles around. Even something as simple as trying to remember his _name_ as parts of him slowly try to pick apart from the shattered glass.

_  
  
_

Lux gently pushes Liam back on the bed, making him sit down as he crouches in front of him, eyes darting between Liam’s.

_  
  
_

“Are you all the way here right now?”

_  
  
_

Liam shakes his head as he winces. He doesn’t know _where_ he is right now.

_  
  
_

Lux looks down at the glass.

_  
  
_

_“Maybe breaking it wasn’t the_ brightest _idea…”_ He mumbles as he raises his hand up a little, making every shard levitate before it puffs into dust, pulverising right before Liam’s eyes. He blinks a few times in clarity.

_  
  
_

“You _think?”_

_  
  
_

He brushes his hand through his hair as his thoughts collect normally finally, getting his bearings straight again. With that of course comes all the turmoil in his body he was trying to get a _way_ from.

_  
  
_

“You need a haircut.” Lux smirks at him, pulling his hands away from his face as he looks closely moving his hands through Liam’s hair when he jerks his head up towards the ceiling.

_  
  
_

“ _You_ need a haircut.” Liam mumbles as his eyes move up like normal, letting Lux examine him like a doctor. Lux brightens the light in the room, making the flames in the window grow so Liam’s pupil shrinks with the light. They’re all brown and full of their naturally dewy glow. Lux smiles.

_  
  
_

“You’re _fine_.”

_  
  
_

When his fingers stay at the hairs on the back of his neck for too long, Liam pulls his wrists away from him which makes Lux roll his eyes as he gets up and glides away again, out the door.

_  
  
_

“Look don’t have a fucking conniption, I’m not gonna jump your goddamn bones alright? Just put some clothes on and I won’t _stare at you_.” He sounds kind of funny, half-way slipping from Zayn's dragged out, relaxed tongue into a New Yorker a little bit again and Liam doesn’t think he does that consciously.

_  
  
_

He gets up and hops over to the door quickly like a bunny, keeping his blanket up as he pokes his head out seeing Lux going towards the hall.

_  
  
_

_“Where are you going?”_

_  
  
_

Lux looks back at him.

_  
  
_

“Outside. I’m hungry and covered in filth. And I am going to _scream_ if I don’t get out of this disgusting house. You’ve fixed my problem so I’m gonna fix yours now remember?” He wiggles his eyebrows, looking towards his crotch that Liam hides out of view in the doorway.

_  
  
_

“Now hurry up and get dressed please? When I come back, you better be ready. Dress warm… like flammable. And wear flat shoes.” he tells Liam before he disappears down the hall.

_  
  
_

Liam falls back against the door as it closes, looking upwards and asking himself what in the hell is he _doing_ with himself right now. That storm outside, whipping against the open window… that’s what he’s got himself into.

_  
  
_

After picking his “warm” clothes for the day, (flammable? He doesn’t even know what that would be if it’s not firefighter gear) He picks a plain white t-shirt and regular blue skinnies with white vans. Simple dimple. Then he fixes his hair into a fringe, using a big shard of glass he propped up on the desk for a makeshift vanity.

_  
  
_

He’s careful not to space out like that again. His head is just always in the wrong place. A fucked up place where his life has gone to. And because of him, Zayn’s lost total control of his body for probably a _while_ now.

_  
  
_

Liam pushes through his slightly curled, sandy brown hair in annoyance at himself. His hair is getting pretty shaggy. The more shaggy it gets, the more the curls bust out until he starts looking like Harry.

_  
  
_

He hates the way his hair feels with it starts scratching against the back of his neck, even if it’s a little bit. He likes long hair on Zayn but not for himself. It feels like it weighs him down. He does need a haircut.

_  
  
_

Lux is actually remarkably good at doing hair. He shaved, dyed and styled Ava’s hair for him, the violet undercut with the buzzed sides after watching someone do it at a fashion show he saw on TV. Maybe he could do it for Liam too. He easily cuts his own very stylishly. Right now, Lux cut his own low at the sides and tapered at the back while the middle is full of luscious waves upon waves, swooping to the back, very picturesque-like.

_  
  
_

Liam likes how it makes Zayn look like a classy cosmopolitan who reads gothic poetry and romance novels in little cafés. And maybe drinks decaffeinated black tea while he people-watches with his lazy smile. And has a little glint in his golden brown eyes he charms them with when their mutual gazes lingers. And has soft skin that smells of flowers he likes to kiss them with, skin that’s so soft he literally sweats sugary rose water like the dew on a butterfly narcissus. And maybe this guy with his always stylish black hair secretly has a thing for taking pictures of sunsets and clouds cause it reminds him of his boyfriend and has sweet polaroids of him he takes when he thinks Liam is sleeping and cares deeply for the lives of others, whether it’s an animal or a person, willing to sacrifice it all for everyone before himself and probably takes those polaroids so he has something of Liam when he’s gone forever…

_  
  
_

Liam closes his wet eyes when his daydreaming and fantasising gets a little too real and painful.

_  
  
_

He looks at the dark shadow on the wall in front of him of the vase of daffodils. They feel so lonely, drooping over pathetically like they’re wallowing in their sadness too. And maybe Liam is just projecting his own emotions onto these flowers, making them droop as he feels tears on his cheeks he doesn’t even care to wipe away.

_  
  
_

He shakes his head at himself in the mirror, thinking how _pathetic_ he is. Cause he already misses him so much, and it's hurting bad as he holds his fist against his churning gut, feeling like he's gonna be _sick_ the more he thinks about it. But he can’t stop thinking about it cause his brain was built to overthink everything and stress him out. But he holds it in no matter how much it burns.

_  
  
_

He doesn’t know what he’s gonna do with himself after Halloween. They’re both gonna be in two totally separate worlds, alone. And Zayn… he doesn't know _what's_ gonna happen to him.

_  
  
_

He feels like his heart might just break for Zayn and he be able to stop himself from fading away, just like that star eventually did when Narcissus left the surface. Maybe souls move on after the body can’t bare to live with a broken heart anymore.

_  
  
_

“Hey can you throw me some flat shoes?” Zayn’s voice from the window startles Liam as Lux pokes his head inside. Liam quickly wipes his face, discreet so Lux won’t see the tears and know he’s crying. He cries too much here.

_  
  
_

“Which ones?” Liam clears his tight throat as he looks under the desk, sniffing a little and rubbing under his nose. Lux frowns a little, biting his lip.

_  
  
_

“Any are… okay.” He says slowly.

_  
  
_

Liam just gives him his other vans since they’re right in front of the desk. They wear the same size. Harry brings him clothes and Zayn does his laundry here.

_  
  
_

When Lux takes them, his hand brushes against Liam’s and stays for a beat longer than necessary. He looks like he might say something but Liam won’t bring his head up so he just leaves instead, holding his lips in tightly as he frowns, gliding away outside.

_  
  
_

When Lux disappears again, Liam starts to call Harry again. He needs to hear his advice about taking things one step at a time so he'll calm again instead of spacing out.

_  
  
_

He stops himself from doing that as he stares down at his phone. Harry’s just as stressed on the surface as Liam is in hell right now and he’s got his own shit he’s doing and there’s no way he’s gonna stay calm about Zayn handing his body over to Lux again and Liam doesn't need to stress him out more. He needs to learn how to cope on his own for once without breaking down. He kind of feels like useless dead weight right now.

_  
  
_

He sighs wearily, standing up and looking out of the window with his hands clasped together on the edge, looking at the wind whipping around and the thunder rumbling far away.

_  
  
_

He also listens to the voices sounding through the thin walls of the house, Zayn’s voice talking to a girl he oftens hears sometimes, until he hears another one. It sounds like a pair of giggling young girls live here too. There's no telling _what_ lives here after what Harry told him.

_  
  
_

He doesn't even care to be afraid of even that right now. He’s desensitised to the dangers of living with demons. Even his own.

_  
  
_

He lets his thoughts get swept away with the storm. It’s not so harrowing once you get used to it. Lust is actually quite mesmerising to look at, seeing everything in the sky moving together continuously as shades of red turn over on more shades or red like water.

_  
  
_

He can feel himself getting high as he looks at the sky. Not drugs high. _His_ high. The one on that next plane but not completely leaving his body. Kind of overlapping.

_  
  
_

After a while, he finds the calm instead of stress. A sad calm, but still calm at least. Even though it’s usually the rain that has this effect on him, he’s finding it in fire now. And it feels _good._ Like how hellfire feels in his lungs.

_  
  
_

He tells himself that everything is okay. Everything is on FIRE but… this is okay. He didn’t need to worry about Zayn’s body because Lux is just essentially getting a breath of fresh “air” right now - if you just replaced air with hellfire.

_  
  
_

Even if that maybe also includes going to find one of his friends to sleep with. Maybe even that Adonis guy since Lux doesn't seem interested in _Liam_ anymore now that he’s back home where he can fuck God’s and sex demons instead of boring humans or eating tasteless liquid hellfire.

_  
  
_

Even if Liam _hates_ that, hates the fact that he's with other people in Zayn's body, he hates a lot of things right not so he’s just gonna have to live with it in silence. Once Lux comes back, Zayn was going to _murder_ him for breaking the mirrors but--

_  
  
_

“Are you ready now?” Lux appears in the window outside, breaking Liam out of his head. Their noses bop, making Liam laugh and back up a little as he’s brought back down completely.

_  
  
_

Lux smiles like he always does when he blinks normal again, like a “glad you're back,” kind of smile.

_  
  
_

He motions for Liam to climb through the window. And Liam gawks at him now. He was too busy trying to hide the fact that he was in tears to get a good look at Lux before. Now that he’s right in Liam’s face, he can see everything. He’s on _fire._

_  
  
_

Not in the horrible, burning alive type of look. It’s… beautiful.

_  
  
_

It swirls all over every visible part of him, little microscopic embers flickering all over the darken skin of his bare inked-up arms, all over his face… even in the waves of his hair, golden flakes like the fire under his skin is surfacing a little… or maybe just wearing some expensive perfume that came with glitter, cause it smells wonderful on him.

_  
  
_

Liam still can’t figure out what the smell is exactly but it’s very potent when he’s outside. He can never decide on a word for how Lux smells. Not burning flesh like how Harry says. Something else burning that he can’t put his finger on, but the aroma it emits is quite nice to Liam’s nose now that he's used to it. Especially right now.

_  
  
_

The fire spuming from him is probably invisible to the naked eye inside even though you can always smell and feel it around him but in the light out there, Liam can see it all clearly. No wonder he looks like he glows all over. Outside, he’s effervescent and it’s absolutely breathtaking.

_  
  
_

Liam leans closer, stopping just short of the cusp, looking around in both directions as it all calms. There’s nothing out there but empty land.

_  
  
_

“You want me to come… _outside?”_ Liam says hesitantly.

_  
  
_

“Yes.” Lux smiles.

_  
  
_

Something behind his eyes flickers a little. The fire inside him isn’t so empty and colourless right now. The amber in his eye glints brighter outside, the few specs somehow more prominent and noticeable than the mostly faded parts. It’s probably more noticeable right now because it matches the embers all over his skin so the colour just pops but… Liam knows the difference isn’t that he’s outside.

_  
  
_

The burning inside him has a point of reference right now. And it’s looking at Liam, pulling him closer.

_  
  
_

Lux reaches in the window and takes Liam’s hands carefully.

_  
  
_

Liam’s eyes widen as his skin changes when Lux brings his hands out slowly, glittering like translucent crystals instead of fiery like Lux. Almost like… he can see through his skin. And it’s _scorching_ hot. He gasps and pulls his hands back, looking at his skin. It appears perfectly normal inside. No burns or transparency.

_  
  
_

“Light from hellfire, and in general, tends to shine through pellucid objects… like soft bodies.” Lux explains to him why Liam’s skin looks like that outside.

_  
  
_

“Pellucid? Like clear?”

_  
  
_

“Where’d you here that word?” Lux smiles. Liam shakes his head a little.

_  
  
_

“I was always put in remedial English, which is like a class for students who have difficulty “learning” cause I couldn’t keep up when I tried to take my English Literature GCSE. We always did “pellucid prose” in writing and reading cause it was clear… like easier to understand than advanced literature. And in music, I always do pellucid _singing_ was always clear and light in… _tone so…”_

_  
  
_

He looks back at Lux’s patient face, watching Liam with raised brows as he smiles when he stops rambling. Great now he knows he’s an _actual_ dumbass.

_  
  
_

“I didn’t know you _sang…_ ”

_  
  
_

Liam blushes, not expecting him to say that which makes Lux smiles even more.

_  
  
_

He doesn’t really “sing”. It’s just a class and no one knows he does it but him, the 5 people that were in music with him, their teacher and his therapist.

_  
  
_

She recommended the class at the community centre next to her office a few months ago because of how much he’d rave to her about High Tide all the time.

_  
  
_

When she seen how into them he was, she gave him a challenge to see how he likes music and he actually found it pretty therapeutic. Even if he didn’t think he had the best voice. He was glad there weren’t a lot of people around to hear him sing when they did sometimes. He changes the subject quickly.

_  
  
_

“Zayn said I have to stay in here.”

_  
  
_

“Do you want Zayn to fuck you or not?” He deadpans as his face falls.

_  
  
_

Liam laughs as he blushes again. Talking to Lux was _way_ easier in a glass than in person. It seems like everything he says now makes him blush, a permanent effect Zayn will always have on him. And Lux too apparently.

_  
  
_

“Can’t your clairvoyant friend come here?”

_  
  
_

“We’re _demons_ right now, Leem. _No one_ can keep us locked up in cages.”

_  
  
_

Sometimes Lux slips up and says things Liam doesn’t think he means to say outloud. Like how he just said he’s a demon _right now._ Which means… he’s not always a demon.

_  
  
_

“You could use some hellfire in you too. Hellfire first. Then we’re gonna fly down a little hill and see my friend Xhane and fix your clairvoyance. And then you can get some dick, yeah? From one bottom to another, it is very much worth the journey.”

_  
  
_

“Please don’t call me that.” Liam shakes his head as smiles a little.

_  
  
_

He feels the heat from the window sill for a moment before he slowly sticks one hand out with his fingers over the edge, watching his skin glimmer again, embracing the heat now.

_  
  
_

He sticks out his whole arm quickly, gaping at it how it sticks to his skin too. Hellfire feels on the outside how his insides felt the first time Lux kissed him, when he was falling asleep the night he got struck by lightning. _Really_ fucking good.

_  
  
_

Lux snorts, backing away from the window.

_  
  
_

“If I told you you were on fire right now…” He trails off.

_  
  
_

Liam hoists himself up into the window, gearing to jump out.

_  
  
_

“Would you believe me?” Lux finishes.

_  
  
_

Liam shakes his head as he smiles. He _really_ feels like he’s on fire now. And it makes him feel invincible. He wants to feel it more but… he only manages to teeter.

_  
  
_

“I don’t believe _anything_ you ever say.” He tells Lux as he side steps a little on the edge. “Cause you’re a bloody _liAR-_ ” His foot slips out from underneath him when he misses a step cause he’s wearing slippery vans at Lux’s request, making him yelp loudly as he almost falls.

_  
  
_

His hands quickly grip the side of the window though, holding himself up securely. He exhales with wide eyes at the ground he almost just ate it on.

_  
  
_

“See where talking shit gets you?” Lux tuts as he turns around, gliding away. “Melting into the ground.”

_  
  
_

Liam stares at the ground from the window as his lungs open up _wide._ All the toxic energy he’s been letting build up like fungus in his body is burning right out, lighting up another part of him inside. Something in his veins he doesn’t think he’s ever used before. Not in his pit. In his whole body. And it’s _blisteringly_ hot as the hellfire sparks it like a lighter flicking in him and starting a fire.  

_  
  
_

Liam decides he is definitely a masochist, cause the burn of it all scorches and he loves it. Even that gives him a weird sense of familiarity and nostalgia… like maybe this isn’t the first time he’s been burning alive and thriving from it. He supposes his pain kink is something he picked up from a past life too.

_  
  
_

He hesitates to actually climb all the way out. Obviously, he won’t burn to death but… if he crosses this line, he can’t undo it. Undo being a disobedient fuck once he’s broken Zayn’s rule.

_  
  
_

He’s snuck out before but… not snuck out into _hell_ . Even if he’s a demon, he doesn’t know _what’s_ out there. But he doesn’t know what’s in here either. There’s demons all around him, outside… and inside.

_  
  
_

“You can leave your body and jump into a mirror but you can’t leave a window?” Lux stops as he looks back at him.

_  
  
_

“Luxie,” Liam shakes his head.

_  
  
_

“I won’t tell him you came outside. I bribed my nieces so, no one will know you came outside but _me_ .” Lux assures him. Liam doesn't even ask him how’s that cause that’s the first time he’s directly revealed that he’s really an _uncle._

_  
  
_

“No it’s not that I’m just,”

_  
  
_

_Scared._

_  
  
_

Before he can even register it, Lux is back in front of him and pulling him out of the window, making him fall into him with a tight squeak. The sparks finally ignite fully now like tiny little fireworks going off in a blitz… but only half of them is from being outside. The other half might be from the body pressing into him and arms holding him up by his elbows as he clings to Lux’s shoulders

_  
  
_

“Don’t be scared. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.” Lux says with a calm smile in total equanimity. This is Lux in his natural state, even in temper. Serene in his voice and aplomb in his face with that soft glow all over his skin that gives him the illusion of looking like an angel.

_  
  
_

Liam blinks dopily as he nods.

_  
  
_

Obligatory pause for awkward staring.

_  
  
_

“Am I gonna carry you the entire time or…?” Lux says as Liam looks at the ground and sees that he’s floating too.

_  
  
_

He quickly bends his legs back down so he’s touching the trembling ground, slight tremors rumbling through the rock as it vibrates from the endless thunder from above.

_  
  
_

“You can hold my hand if that helps? You’re gonna have to hold onto me eventually so--”

_  
  
_

“It’s not _that_ bad,” He laughs nervously.

_  
  
_

“But you’re shaking.”

_  
  
_

There’s a hiccup in the hot air. He _is_ shaking. But he’s not scared. There’s no flashbacks in his eyes or reflection making him look unrecognisable this time even as they’re right in each other’s faces. Just Lux. And he hasn’t seen Lux this close in a while.

_  
  
_

When Lux’s eyes flit down his face and licks his lips a little, Liam lets go quickly, pushing off and looking down at his shoes, dusting himself off even though he’s all clean, _anything_ that’s not what he was about to do just now. The movement makes the flakes of fire swirl around his fingers so, it’s a pretty good distraction.

_  
  
_

“It’s not that bad,” He murmurs again, saying a brief chant in his head.

_  
  
_

_He isn’t Zayn. He isn’t Zayn. He isn’t Zayn._

_  
  
_

But he _feels_ like Zayn. Cause Liam feels safe with him and it’s making him act awkward again.

_  
  
_

“Hellfire looks pretty good on you.” Lux nods impressively, before he snorts and continues on around the house with Liam trailing behind him, occupying his thought with himself, looking down at his arms in fascination.

_  
  
_

“Do I look like you right now?” He murmurs.

_  
  
_

He can see right through his skin if he looks hard enough. But he’s not invisible. It’s transparency that can’t be overlooked.

_  
  
_

Lux glances behind him, smiling as Liam’s looking at his body, amused at how amazed Liam is by his own self. He’s glad Liam isn’t afraid to look at himself and maybe _not_ think he’s ugly. Cause he glows in the dark and it’s beautiful. And now he can finally see it himself.

_  
  
_

“Better. You’re _lucidus_ babe. You always look like that to me. _Demon eyes._ ” Lux says that last part in a mockingly spooky way as they continue to go around the house, passing by windows Liam looks into curiously.

_  
  
_

It’s not really the luxurious mansion he'd thought it'd be on the outside. It's actually… kind of small. That thought reminds Liam of Lux’s name. Or part of his name anyways. _Luxuria._

_  
  
_

He squints a little as he looks at Lux ahead of him.

_  
  
_

“Isn’t that your name? Lucidus?”

_  
  
_

The way Lux says certain words with an almost Italian sounding accent sometimes let's Liam easily differentiate when it’s Latin or English or something else entirely. The way he just said _lucidus_ was definitely Latin and it sounds exactly like how his brothers say his shortened name. When Lux says his own name himself, he always says it in an English accent but his brothers say it in Latin. When they say Lux, they say “Luke’s”. Or _Luksey_ instead of Luxie _._ Heavy on the X rather than the U.

_  
  
_

Liam has a feeling he's gonna be pretty knowledgeable in Latin by the time he leaves here. And then he'll be smart and sophisticated like Zayn and Harry.

_  
  
_

“No… but lux can mean the same thing sometimes. Words like pellucid and lucid derive from the word _lucidus_ , clear or bright and shining. Most English words come from Latin I guess.” He shrugs with his hands hanging lazily in the pockets of his sagging jeans.

_  
  
_

Lux doesn’t elaborate on what _his_ name actually is or what it means so Liam doesn’t ask.

_  
  
_

He doesn’t bug Lux about things he gets the feeling Lux doesn’t like to talk about anymore like he did when he first talked to him… which is literally anything even remotely personal. Because he either doesn't answer at all or evades the question.

_  
  
_

No things like what was wrong with him the night of the fire or even simple things like his name or his age (even though Liam has a pretty solid idea of how “old” Lux is now) or what he likes besides _sex_ or what his family or friends are like or anything of that nature unless he offers it himself. But Liam can’t help really wanting to know.

_  
  
_

Lux is even more mysterious than Zayn and Liam never thought there could ever be anyone in existence as enigmatic as Zayn. Hell, Zayn knew about a _curse on his soul_ his entire life and managed to only ever tell one person about it.

_  
  
_

Same with him being hot and bothered over Liam his whole life and no one but the few people he told ever knowing about it no matter how obvious it was. He had an entire _town_ knowing everything about him but absolutely nothing at all.

_  
  
_

He perfected the act of an _act_. Having everyone knowing every version of you there is… except who you actually are. Everyone knows Zayn Malik but… no one really does. Liam does.

_  
  
_

It makes sense that Lux is uber secretive too. Afterall, if he _was_ a person… he’d be Zayn.

_  
  
_

He is seriously failing horribly at trying not think too hard about that. Because Harry’s right, it is very confusing not only to Liam’s body but… to his emotion too. Even _before_ he saw his face. Now that he has a little, he thinks about Lux’s face every time he closes his eyes. Cause every time he sees Zayn, Lux is right there too. Liam just thinks if he got to know him better, it wouldn't be so confusing anymore.

_  
  
_

Something as simple as his _name_ would be nice. All Liam knows for sure is that it has multiple meanings… whatever his full name is. Cause their names reveal how they live their lives. Harry told him what his older sister’s name is, the one that gets off on killing and torturing humans for fun.

_  
  
_

Just like the stylist Avaritia, the greedy label whore who never has enough “outfits”, which sounds a little something like Zayn. And like G, the conscientious free-spirit that only eats organic aether from narcissus plants on Earth’s surface to _excess_ , also something sort of similar to Zayn. And even Ace, the sleepy demon who knows everything, which is _definitely_ Zayn. Liam’s stylish, health-consciously intelligent little sleepy boy.

_  
  
_

They don't talk about Dia or Ira since they moved out of the house centuries ago and never came back. Ira was removed by force. They didn't end on good terms with Nars apparently. Liam knows that Ira probably killed someone cause Lux told him the keeper of demons sends anyone deeper into hell if they don’t follow the rules.

_  
  
_

You wanna fight people? This isn’t the place. Do it in the fourth circle of Wrath. You wanna steal dead bodies? Do it in the sixth circle of Heresy. You wanna kill people? Do it in the seventh circle of Violence. Or the last one, Cocytus. Not Lust, where you can burn alive to your heart’s content. Liam supposes that’s a good thing about only being in the second level of hell. There’s not much violence here. Only incineration. Maybe that’s worse depending on who you ask.

_  
  
_

Liam doesn’t think it’s possible to end on good terms with Zayn’s wrath or envy. Cause Zayn can have a _temper_ at times but it’s not always blaring and in your face.

_  
  
_

Sometimes his attitude with the whole world seemed random. Of course, Liam at least has an idea of _why_ now but still. His wrath was not to be fucked with. But his jealousy was a WHOLE other story. It goes pretty well with his wrath. Liam understands why they don’t talk about those two.

_  
  
_

It kind of makes him wonder if Lux has got a really evil name too and maybe that’s why he doesn’t say what it is cause then Liam will know how he lived before all this.

_  
  
_

Actually now that Liam really thinks about it, out of the hours upon hours he’s spent talking to him, he doesn't really know anything about Lux that indicates his personality. He doesn’t really talk about himself at all if he’s not talking about sex and lust or demons _in general_. He does the same thing Zayn does, offering very little or vague insight into him that makes you think you know a lot now but… not really.

_  
  
_

He’ll maybe mention something about some of his family randomly, like that he has nieces, or his friends if it comes up, like how he did earlier when he told Liam about his friends with a banshee for a mum that he never got to finish talking about. Or he’ll tell Liam some random fact about the underworld and the things that live here. He’ll freely talk about how much he enjoys sex in explicit detail without a problem. And he’ll let Liam talk his ear off for hours. But he _never_ lets a word slip about his personal self. Well… not purposefully.

_  
  
_

He even hides his natural form away from Liam. He was really pissed off when Tony said anything at all about him to Harry. He’s somehow very sexual but not at all intimate, like some kind of paradox. It was… kind of weird.

_  
  
_

“You’re quiet.” Lux snorts as he breaks the particularly long silence they’re in, longer than normal.

_  
  
_

“Harder to talk when you can see me, huh?”

_  
  
_

_Very._

_  
  
_

“I’ve never really… seen _you._ ” Liam ventures bravely. Lux doesn’t say anything for a while, which makes him roll his eyes.

_  
  
_

“You wouldn’t be able to talk to me if you saw me.” He answers finally.

_  
  
_

“Why wouldn’t I be able to talk?”

_  
  
_

“Cause you’d be too hung up on _staring_ at me.”

_  
  
_

Liam snorts a little. He’s pretty conceited, that’s for sure.

_  
  
_

“I think I’d be fine.”

_  
  
_

_“Well, you weren’t last time.”_ Lux mutters to himself. Now it’s Liam’s turn to not know what to say to that. So he doesn’t say anything.

_  
  
_

He looks down at Lux’s feet, dangling behind him as he glides slowly, bobbing along the ground.

_  
  
_

When he drifts too low, one of his shoes might skid the ground ever so often. Every time it happens, his natural reaction is to jerk his leg back up as soon as it touches the ground. It doesn’t seem like he does that consciously either. He never acknowledges the whole floating thing at all and Liam thinks that’s probably the weirdest thing about him yet. He hasn’t seen Lux touch the ground since he got here. Zayn was weird about trailing dirt on his shoes and having dirty feet too.

_  
  
_

“Where are we going exactly?” Liam decides to ask instead of any of what he’s actually thinking about.

_  
  
_

“To Xhane to fix your clairvoyance.”

_  
  
_

“Who is Xhane again?”

_  
  
_

Liam wonders if Lux ever fucks him. He blushes immediately after thinking that.

_  
  
_

He’s really glad Lux can’t hear his thoughts. It’d be really embarrassing if Lux knew how badly he wanted to know everything there is to know about him before he… never sees him again.

_  
  
_

“Another peculiar friend of mine. We’re going down to the skatepark. All the cool demons hang out there, like Xhane, who is an expert in ESP. Also known as ‘extrasensory perception’, which is what you need help with.” He takes one hand out of his pocket and points ahead after they finally round a corner of the house and Liam’s jaw immediately drops when he finally sees other signs of civilization in Lust.

_  
  
_

“The skate park is just below this hill top.”

_  
  
_

Liam gawks at it. “Little hill” his _ass._ This thing is a massive _rock face._

_  
  
_

It turns out, the house is on an extremely high _cliff_ that has a plateau of a few miles radius around it before it dips at an _almost_ 90 degree angle to the lower part Lust.

_  
  
_

The house is touching the storming sky. Down below, it looks like thousands of villages and towns. Not just one, but endless miles and miles of many neighbourhoods that turn into towns that skip over to even more towns. They circle all around the hill. Lust itself is all encircled by a series of colossal, rocky chasms, all lining up and keeping the land within it as fire dances all over the edges. They really are in the very middle of Lust.

_  
  
_

The chasms surrounding them all converge at a giant tower across the way that also disappears into the sky. The tower looks like it may be where the border of Lust and the next level of hell meet.

_  
  
_

_“Holy fucking crap,”_ Liam murmurs as his stomach flips over when he sees how high in the air this house is sitting.

_  
  
_

_“Language.”_ Lux mumbles but Liam ignores him cause he swears just a much as Zayn as he really has no backing to reprimand Liam.

_  
  
_

He squints up at the stormy sky. The margin of where Lust ends is nowhere to be seen. The house rooftop itself disappears into the bulbous clouds. He can see the entire outline of the space it occupies. If Liam drew a picture of it, it'd be a flat, half dome right under Earth’s surface with a small house in the inside.

_  
  
_

“This is… amazing,” Liam shakes his head slowly.

_  
  
_

“Our house sits on the tallest hill in Lust.” Lux tells him.

_  
  
_

“ _Right_ at a tip of a break in space called a _vanitas_ that connects to Earth’s surface… but you already know that. Gateways that lead Earth directly to hell are extremely rare.”

_  
  
_

Liam nods in understanding. After his daily dosage of Harry's little informative phone calls, he knows just how _rare_ this is. Nothing like this has aboded both the human and the divine this closely for thousands of years. Like Alice falling through the looking glass.

_  
  
_

A vanity. Also known as “empty space”. The marsh is just a giant mirror with a house inside.  

_  
  
_

The effect of the marsh cascades over the top of the hill. And Liam knows the inside of a mirror is _definitely_ empty. Nothing in it at all but the illusion of space aside from the house Nars built inside it. Maybe that’s why it isn't as big on the outside as it appears on the inside. The house inside seems to have a reversed effect.

_  
  
_

“Do you know of any others?” Liam asks.

_  
  
_

Lux shakes his head.

_  
  
_

“Things like this don't really occur randomly. Ours is from a curse. I’ve read about a few legends of holes that were torn in space that leads Gluttony to Greed. There's a gateway to Limbo in Wrath that might still exist. And there used to be a shitload in Egypt and Mexico but those were all on the surface. Even I can tear a hole in space but creating something the connects two different worlds like that… only a God can do that.”

_  
  
_

“You r _ead?”_

_  
  
_

“Do you actually think I just know everything naturally on my own?” Lux laughs.

_  
  
_

Liam tries to picture Lux reading a book in his free time. All he can imagine him doing is having sex or watching TV, the only things Liam knows for sure that he likes to do.

_  
  
_

Now… he can throw in reading. And all Liam can picture now is the stacks of books in Zayn’s bedroom, organised meticulously along his bookshelf. And he sees them in primary with Zayn sitting in the library at school, sprawled across a table, taking up as much space as possible despite the librarians warning him to sit properly with his head buried in an encyclopedia at 11 years old, reading off words to Liam that no one’s used since 1850.

_  
  
_

Or in secondary with a comic book at 17, his headphones in so he won’t hear that same librarian nagging him about having his feet on the table. Until Liam comes in and Zayn steals his glasses, trying to see how well he can comprehend what he reads through Liam’s eyes and making Liam sick with laughter when he draws profane images in the back of textbooks until the librarian throws them both out for being hooligans. Zayn wasn’t such a bad influence… Liam was just an enabler.

_  
  
_

He smiles softly as he reminisces about those simpler times.

_  
  
_

“What about the portal in Zayn’s room?” He asks Lux.

_  
  
_

“Those don’t last forever. After even a day of not using it when it’s opened, the tear in space closes back up on it’s own… like a wound on a body.”

_  
  
_

“Wow…” That’s all Liam can manage to murmur as he frowns.

_  
  
_

No _wonder_ Zayn was using it everyday. The most baffling thing that Liam’s is starting to realise is that Zayn knew how to open a portal without Lux’s help.

_  
  
_

He was secretive, _sure._ But he seems to have, not just a past life that never ended or even a double life. His knowledge about this shit is staggering towards the impossible. Liam is gonna have a long talk with him about this. How much did he _really_ know and why the fuck would he keep it a secret up to this point in time?

_  
  
_

“Most leading out are rumoured to be in Cocytus. But Cocytus is a biggest river in hell so, they’re not so easy to find.” Lux shrugs as he’s looking up at their small house too.

_  
  
_

“Anybody can get into hell but it’s not as easy to get out once you’re here.”

_  
  
_

Liam wonders if he knows about who came out of their portal 400 years ago. Fucking _Zayn_ probably knows. He doesn’t like discuss this with Liam in detail but Liam doesn’t care. He can’t be left in the dark about this.

_  
  
_

He looks back over at Lux.

_  
  
_

“Have you ever tried to get out?” He asks instead. Lux wasn't even alive yet when that happened.  

_  
  
_

He smirks at Liam.

_  
  
_

“I _did_ get out.”

_  
  
_

“Really?” Liam’s brows knit.

_  
  
_

“Yeah mate, it was _wicked_. I never thought I’d come back to this fucked place again,” Lux nods with a boastful smile, looking back at his house with his arms crossed over his chest, making Liam look at his, literally, dazzling biceps. They way everything out here moves against his skin is so distracting. He’s probably right, if he looks like this all the time, Liam would be too busy staring at him to speak.

_  
  
_

“Why did you ever come back then?”

_  
  
_

Lux’s face goes blank and unreadable as he tilts his head to the side a little, looking at Liam again with his unblinking look that always makes Liam want to cover himself or squirm before he nods his head to the side, gesturing for Liam to follow him back over to the side of the house.

_  
  
_

“Just did.” He shrugs simply.

_  
  
_

As he pulls a heavy stone out of the foundation of the house to reveal a cavity someone clearly dug out for a hideaway filled with random stuff that he digs into, Liam thinks about what he just said. He got out because of _Zayn._

_  
  
_

Lux lives in a house that’s got a rare bridge that connects straight to Earth that he could never cross over into because he never had a body… until he woke up in one after Zayn got sacrificed. And he came back to hell for Liam.

_  
  
_

Liam doesn’t even know if it would be weird if he expressed gratitude or apologised about this whole thing. He feels like it'd be too awkward. Everything is already awkward enough for him with Lux in person. It’s just easier to not add to it. What the hell would he even say?

_  
  
_

_‘Thanks for dying for me?’_

_  
  
_

He feels totally responsible for all this shit. None of this would be happening if it wasn’t for him. Zayn probably wouldn’t even be cursed.

_  
  
_

Liam can’t help thinking this is all that stupid stars fault. Nars wouldn’t have been punished forever if it wasn’t so hung up on trying to reach the sky and _kill himself_.

_  
  
_

And he wouldn't have made that deal on his _soul_ to be immortal for her. Their relationship just seemed extremely dysfunctional to Liam. Because what did she do but sit in the sky and watch it all happen? What _could_ she do? She had to watch him reflect on himself like a punished child until he wanted to _die_.

_  
  
_

What could he have possibly done to make someone that angry? Liam’s heard a few different stories for why he got cursed. Everyone has their own version it seems.

_  
  
_

The Enchiridion say it was his disdainful arrogance and rejection of _self_ and everyone around him, careless heart-breaker thinking he was on God’s level of existence that made him reflect on himself to see his own short life, pointless self-indulgence and especially see his own _humanity._ Because the essence of everyone’s life they will always know for certain is that everyone dies. Narcissus seemed to forget that. Or maybe he just simply didn’t care.

_  
  
_

Tony said it was a misunderstanding that some people thought Narcissus must’ve thought he was a God cause he rejected everyone’s love and broke people’s hearts without a care in the world, even if they died. Everyone thought he was too full of himself. In love with his own reflection. But Tony is positive the reality of the situation wasn’t that he was too full of himself. His heart was full of someone else that he didn’t have any room left for anyone else. Not even himself. He just never noticed anyone else but them, which is dangerous when you’re own life is completely disregarded. He wouldn’t have noticed the people literally dying at his feet and Liam can see how that can come off as arrogant and disdainful.

_  
  
_

Lux told him it was because he tried to surpass death and reach the heavens in a stupid act of hubris after he seen his friend Icarus fail at it cause he used the wrong type of wings. Lux was told that Narcissus was planning on stealing a pair of angel wings to reach his destination. Apparently, Nars just said, “ _fuck a BRIDGE. I’m_ flying _to heaven.”_ Liam thinks that version of what happened sounds nothing like Zayn. Cause he’s not that stupid. Well, he does act kind of stupid when it comes to Liam. Cause he’s gotten himself in a _lot_ of trouble for Liam before, like getting arrested or thrown out of libraries, and that fact alone suddenly makes that version of the story sound very believable.

_  
  
_

Harry thinks the marsh itself is the curse cause the first time he saw it was the first time he saw his face, therefore whoever lead him to the water is the reason he got tricked.

_  
  
_

Liam honestly thinks they’re all missing a huge piece of the puzzle. He didn’t just randomly look into a marsh and get fixated with his face. _Someone_ cursed Nars.

_  
  
_

The only person who truly know why this happened is _Narcissus_ because he’s the only one that was actually there and Zayn can barely remember to come to school everyday let alone remember something that didn’t really happen to him 1,000 years ago.

_  
  
_

But someone else was there watching it all happen too. From the sky. And it wasn’t a God.

_  
  
_

_Adara._

_  
  
_

Even Avaritia called Liam Adara. As far as Ava is concerned, this mess is all _Liam’s_ fault. He doesn’t even really know the full story about all that Narcissus and Adara stuff aside from how terribly it ended.

_  
  
_

All he really knows is history is repeating itself regardless of what really happened.

_  
  
_

Lux is willingly sacrificing the very thing that’s given him life, even though he won’t admit that obvious fact outloud, and Zayn is closing his only known doorway out of here to make sure the devil stays in hell forever then he's going looking for another gateway that might not even exist in the deepest depths of hell and Liam gets off totally scotch free, traveling around the world with money that Zayn’s soul is literally paying for and it all feels so horribly _wrong_ cause they’re both basically sacrificing themselves and Liam is doing what?

_  
  
_

All he can do for now is bury those painful emotions away. He buries it until he can’t feel it anymore and focuses on the present instead of the future because the future can seriously suck a huge, veiny _heavy-R_ grade-ugly cock right now.

_  
  
_

Lux pulls out an old skateboard and pushes the rock back over the hideaway. When he looks at Liam, his eyes bulge in alarm.

_  
  
_

“ _Liam, NO!”_ He yells as his hands come up and pull back, yanking Liam towards him from across the ground.

_  
  
_

“Whoa!” Liam yelps as his chest is pulled in by an invisible force, arms flapping back and laughing when Lux catches him.

_  
  
_

“That was fun,” He snorts as he thoughts scatter now in excitement, understanding now why Safaa was so hype when he did the same thing to her.

_  
  
_

“You absolutely _cannot_ do that out here!” Lux says sternly as he makes Liam sit down on the skateboard with a hard look in his eye.

_  
  
_

“No projection. No disassociating. No spacing out of any part of you. Everything needs to stay inside of your body, every part you can feel. If you do that in the wrong place, you will be _stuck_ here. There’s dark stuff out here that will _hurt_ you. You won’t survive with any part of you hanging out of your body, _intellegis?”_

_  
  
_

Liam frowns a little.

_  
  
_

“I can’t control it--”

_  
  
_

“Yes. Yes you can. You just have to concentrate--”

_  
  
_

“Luxie you KNOW I have SHIT for brains and I’m not insulting myself on purpose but it’s true. I can't.”

_  
  
_

Lux bites down on his lip hard as he looks at Liam with a pained expression, looking down at the ground as he contemplates something for a few seconds before he suddenly makes Liam stand up, pushing him up against the stone wall of the house with way too much force, knocking the wind out of him. Liam winces in shocked pain, feeling like a wrecking ball just smashed into his back.

_  
  
_

“Sorry, just…. **_.look at me._ ** ” He pulls Liam’s chin back down, forcing him to look Lux in the eye as his pupil expands briefly, just over his iris this time, looking into Liam’s body like he did before at school.

_  
  
_

He sweeps through Liam as he looks for something, swirling around with the fire inside like a tornado as the cold chases the heat. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s looking for now but… it feels nice. Like when you inhale the fresh air at the beach.

_  
  
_

It vanishes after a few seconds then as Liam gasps. Lux’s eyes return to normal.

_  
  
_

_“Everything stays in your body when you’re outside, okay?”_ He says with that voice that makes Liam think he’ll do whatever he asks him to.

_  
  
_

“You can let it all hang out in the house, walk around butt ass naked for all I care but not _outside.”_

_  
  
_

Liam finds himself nodding instead of saying he can’t. Cause… Lux is right, he can if he just stay concentrated. Maybe the next time he calls Harry up, he’ll tell him to bring his adderall down here when he comes back tomorrow.

_  
  
_

It was prescribed for his anxiety and he used to take it to stay focused during tests and exams in school. Even if that nor any medication he’s ever tried didn’t make him stop disassociating, he still wants it cause adderall does make him focus the most.

_  
  
_

“You don’t need drugs either, babe. You’ve got me.” Lux smiles as he lets go of him then, turns away.

_  
  
_

His feet finally come down for the first time as he kicks the skateboard sideways and hops on.

_  
  
_

“You can’t skate can you?” Lux asks him as he starts to roll away.

_  
  
_

Liam blinks, dazedly, a few times before he shakes his head for his barings and hurriedly pushes off the wall to catch back up with Lux skating towards the edge of the rocky hill. Liam stays _far away_ from the edge.

_  
  
_

“No… not really. Zayn and Louis tried to show me when we were like 14 but, Louis would always trip me when he wasn’t looking so… I never got into it,”

_  
  
_

Lux tsks in annoyance as he shakes his head again.

_  
  
_

_“So involved with such a TWAT for what?”_ He murmurs to himself as he stops over the edge.

_  
  
_

Liam smiles a little. He liked that Lux still hated Louis. Even if he slept with him.

_  
  
_

Liam still might not understand sex completely but he’s learned a few things. Like just cause people have sex with each other doesn't mean they even really like each other at all. Like with Sophia. In her case, sex was almost like a weapon in a jealous act coming out of an aching heart.

_  
  
_

After what happened there, he doesn’t think he could ever have casual sex. He’s fully aware that his experience has been _completely_ out of the norm. But he still thinks it’s was too intense for Liam to just throw his dick around like it was nothing.

_  
  
_

“So… umm,” Liam clears his throat, putting his hands in his back pockets.

_  
  
_

“How are we getting down there?” he asks nervously, cause if Lux says they’re skating down this rocky slope, then Liam is running his ass back into the house.

_  
  
_

“See this stream?” Lux kneels down a little and splashes his hand in a stream of water running along the edge, throwing it towards Liam who instinctively dodges it, easily as he steps away with a smile.

_  
  
_

He squints down at the sparkling stream, following its trail down the the edge until it breaks off in different directions, spreading out all over the hill, some of them connecting to rivers that break off into more rivers further down below that spread for miles, falling down the hill like _waterfalls_.

_  
  
_

Liam follows all of them with wide eyes, remembering what Charon told them about rivers that sway in all directions in the multiverse. But waterfalls in hell?

_  
  
_

“How can there be water in fire?” Liam asks him.

_  
  
_

Lux points to the top of his house and Liam’s brows raise. Right, the _marsh._

_  
  
_

“All these waterfalls come from there?” Liam gasps after he follows a small trail of water back to the house. There’s a few trails coming from the house, falling over the edge of the dome.

_  
  
_

Lux shrugs.

_  
  
_

“That book told you there’s a waterfall in the marsh didn’t it? Well this is it. Several.” He says as he stands back up.

_  
  
_

“The storm in the sky makes the water look like a whirlpool below the surface of the marsh. It spins around all over Lust and disperses different streams in every possible direction. These streams take you anywhere you can possibly think of in Lust. All you need to do is ride the right one. Obviously I am as expect at riding things so,” Lux smirks at the ground as he twists around on the board sharply, hopping on the edge.

_  
  
_

“Hop on.”

_  
  
_

Liam shakes his head.

_  
  
_

“Yeah… I can do just about _anything_ but ride down a 1,000 foot dead drop to the ground.”

_  
  
_

“First of all this is only 1,500 kilometers on a _slight_ incline. Like a ramp. That is a little less than 1,000 feet. Second of all, it has several paths that will guide us down. And last, I skate down all the time. You went through an _endless abyss_ in a dead moon, I can assure you this is much _more safe_ and easier than that.”

_  
  
_

“I _fell_ through it and we almost DIED--”

_  
  
_

“Do you legitimately think I’d tell you to get on if I thought you would _die?”_

_  
  
_

Liam takes a deep breath and shakes his head, deciding it’s time he got over his fear of heights. He’s already in hell… he practically grew up in it. He shouldn’t be afraid of anything by this point. Not even death.

_  
  
_

“Okay, fuck it.” He jumps behind Lux quickly with one foot turned sideways in front of the other before he starts thinking about it too hard, wobbling a little before he holds onto Lux’s shoulders. Lux looks sideways a little as he teeters, smiling.

_  
  
_

“You swear too much.” he snorts. “It sounds seriously weird coming from your mouth.”

_  
  
_

That makes Liam laugh really loud briefly, coming from _him._

_  
  
_

“Yeah sure Z, _I swear too much.”_ he hiccups on his laugh as he accidently says Zayn’s name. Lux doesn’t notice, or maybe doesn’t care, pushing along onto the stream.

_  
  
_

“Hold on tight Li,”

_  
  
_

“WAIT!” Liam squeezes his shoulders when he sees over the edge. It’s _so_ steep and it looks like it never ends. It occurs to him they’re not wearing any safety gear… or Liam isn’t anyways. Lux waits.

_  
  
_

“Do you have a helmet or something?!?” He says quickly. Lux shoots him a look that says _“the fuck???”_  
 

“You sound like my friend Damon.” Lux shakes his head as he looks forward.

_  
  
  
_

“We’re _DEMONS,_ fuck helmets!” He yells as pushes out in one long powerful kick across the ground that shoots them off the edge of the hill, straight into the air.

_  
  
_

[ Tame Impala - The Moment ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_opF2Dn6Fk4)

_  
  
_

Liam’s stomach does olympian-level acrobatics into his throat as his legs lift up behind him as gravity goes against him, straight out into the air.

_  
  
_

“OHHH…. MY… _GAHHHHHHHHHHHHH,”_ He screams, wrapping his arms around Lux’s stomach when his hands slip off his shoulders, holding on for his life while Lux is in hysterics, laughing at Liam’s screaming.

_  
  
_

“YOU’RE FUCKING INSANE!” He shouts into the wind of the storm beating against him.

_  
  
_

“Stop swearing!” He reprimands as he glances over his shoulder, “Don’t act like someone you’re not. It doesn’t really work for me.”

_  
  
_

Lux crouches down as they’re in mid-air, grabbing the side of his board with one hand while the other stretches out behind him to keep balance as they continue to soar through the air.

_  
  
_

Liam looks back at the ground they’re getting further away from, seeing his feet swung in the air behind him in terror so he decides against looking at the ground, looking above him instead. The sky is getting closer and the storm clouds are closing in. And the air is carrying them along weightlessly and there’s nothing Liam can do but live in the moment as they fly.

_  
  
_

Liam starts to smile the further away they get now. He feels like Superman.

_  
  
_

“WOOOOOO!” He shouts with his face on the side of Lux’s ribs, making Lux laugh cause it tickles.

_  
  
_

They seem to reach a peak as they pause high in the air for way longer than what the laws of physics would normally allow. He realises they’re actually floating, and Lux can only float so far away from the ground. Which means…

_  
  
_

_“Down we go,”_ Lux says as he lets go of the board and Liam’s worst fears are suddenly confronting him head-on. Cause now they’re FALLING now. Right towards the ground where they have to hit a stream or this board will without a doubt break in half if it grinds on the rock.

_  
  
_

He assumes Lux has good aim but these streams are so small at the top… they’d have to land perfectly. But fuck the landing, _they’re falling._

_  
  
_

As the moment passes, this spontaneous feeling a frantic rush of panic and paranoia overtakes his gut. Even his _demon_ is afraid of heights _._ _  
  
_

Lux lets go of the board completely, at if they aren’t freefalling at 1,000 miles an hours right now flipping it over once at 360 degrees while Liam wraps his legs around his waist while Lux bends his knees again and everything moves in slow motion as Liam blinks slowly, watching them approach the ground with the board a few feet away from them.

_  
  
_

He hugs his around Lux as tightly as possible, feeling the slow murmur in his chest and willing his own heart to level out as he gains some sangfroid (insert _hot blooded instead of cool)_ for his heart to do the same as Lux’s. And the next moment comes when the board is hitting the ground without them and it’s unclear if they’re about to ride on the stream below or obliterate.

_  
  
_

Lux catches onto it perfectly, slamming onto his board so hard Liam’s legs fall off him and he’s not sure how it’s possible that the board isn’t destroyed. But it’s still rolling and their still _alive_.

_  
  
_

Liam would yell in victorious relief but the impact of hitting the stream on the ground with a harsh _umpf_ pushes down on his chest and legs, _hard_ as they shoot down the hill along a thin stream like they just caught a slippery wave that’s jetted them off down the slope. His hands grip his waist on both sides again.

_  
  
_

“You alive back there?” Lux says ahead as he weaves around on the water like they’re surfing on a wave, following its curved path with sharp twists and turns. Maybe Liam would be more lively if they were on smooth flat land but they’re riding almost straight down.

_  
  
_

“I’m gonna throw up!” he cries, burying his face in his back and clenching his stomach.

_  
  
_

“If you throw up on me I will not hesitant to launch your ass down this fucking hill,” Lux warns him. Liam’s too caught up in the wind to laugh.

_  
  
_

“Sorry if I’m, like, breaking your ribs,” Liam yells in response, shakily.

_  
  
_

“You've definitely assaulted my ribs on a much _harder_ scale so it's cool.”

_  
  
_

Liam does laugh into his shirt this time at his dirty joke. He peaks his eyes open a little, immediately regretting it when he sees that the stream they’re riding down is coming to an end in a few seconds.

_  
  
_

“ _Oh my god, OH MY GOD!”_

_  
  
_

Lux leans back against Liam, getting his hair all in his face as they veer off the current they’re riding and Liam screams like a girl when his legs come up once more as Lux jumps off the board again, letting it lift up into the air as he lets it go of it for a few seconds before he catches it again, bending down to make them rotate a few feet over, doing a 180 landing on another, wider stream now. Water splashes up in Liam’s face. It’s cold but it sizzles against his skin, evaporating on contact.

_  
  
_

Lux is _far_ better at skateboarding than Zayn or Louis or any extreme pro-skater will ever be.

_  
  
_

“ _NO TRICKS!”_ Liam screams at him with his eyes closed.

_  
  
_

“Oh come on Leem, it’s fun,” He purposefully kicks it up again so it flips under his feet, turning onto another stream.

_  
  
_

Liam can’t take his stomach flipping over like this, jostling around under them when they meet the ground again. It’s too much to take at once for his scaredy cat demon threatening to tears its way to the surface and get itself out of immediate danger. His pit seems to have an instinct to survive above all else.

_  
  
_

It reminds him of one of his favourite marvel comic heroes, Darwin, who had a body that adapted to survive in it’s surroundings. When he fought the Hulk, his body deemed him unfit to fight so it made him teleport to another country, far away from his opponent.

_  
  
_

When Lux flips the board again, Liam can feel control of his body trying to be taken so he can get away from the threat to his survival.

_  
  
_

“LUXURIA PLEASE!” He begs as his eyelids feel like they might shred from the pressure of keeping them squeezed shut.

_  
  
_

“I like the way that rolls off your _tongue.”_ Lux smirks.

_  
  
_

“I'M GONNA CRY!”

_  
  
_

His gut is ready to reject his body and fall right out of his ass like dropping a massive deuce in his pants. Hell, maybe that’s a good thing, he’d purge his pit right? Just shit the evil right out. He doubts his ass is that powerful though. He’d probably still die. He’d rather die than humiliate himself like that in front of Lux though so he decides against the gross idea altogether.

_  
  
_

“Luxie _please,”_ Liam doesn’t know what he’s even asking him to do cause it’s not like they can get down any other way. But he can’t hold it in any longer.

_  
  
_

“Fine, _baby.”_ Lux sighs.

_  
  
_

Liam really likes being called that for some reason. Even if he’s teasing Liam for being a crybaby like Zayn always does. Without the first part, it just makes him feel embarrassingly mushy.

_  
  
_

Suddenly, the bumpy ride smooths out as they coast. No crazy, rock'n roller bumps or flips. But Liam can feel that they are still speeding straight down so he doesn’t look, keeping his face in Lux’s back, focusing on his heartbeat instead, thumping steadily.

_  
  
_

_“Open your eyes.”_

_  
  
_

_“Not until we’re at the bottom.”_ Liam shakes his head.

_  
  
_

_“Please?”_

_  
  
_

Liam feels him tense body soften suddenly. He says it so gently instead of screaming it at him. For some reason, it makes Liam want to even if he’s almost shitting his pants.

_  
  
_

When he does, he’s instantly blown away. They’re _flying_.

_  
  
_

Well… sort of flying. They’re no longer riding against the rocks. They’re riding along a waterfall that flows down through the air just above the rocks as Lux’s hands are raised below his waist on both sides, making the water rise higher as his hands rise like he’s holding the strings of puppets so they’re above the ground and flowing with the water instead of the rocks, following along the hill without touching it.

_  
  
_

_“Oh my gosh,”_ Liam smiles wide as he looks around them at all the water Lux is making swirl around them. Now _this_ is a high tide.

_  
  
_

_“O M G… it’s water! Like… oh my gosh. Oh my fucking gosh!”_ Lux does a girly shriek as he mocks Liam, fanning himself as he pretends to freak out too, exaggeratedly, making the water smack Liam.

_  
  
_

“We’re FLYING! Shut up.” Liam laughs, pushing his back so he stops as he’s shoved forward, off balance. He tips over the edge on his toes but Lux was obviously born defying gravity and every other known law to physics so he doesn’t fall, holding against the wind just fine before he steps back and kicks back at the stream so they’re pushed along its curve.

_  
  
_

“We’re still on water Liam, we’re _floating.”_

_  
  
_

“Water that’s flying in the air.”

_  
  
_

_“Floating.”_

_  
  
_

“Same thing.”

_  
  
_

Lux shakes his head with a small grin instead of arguing.

_  
  
_

“Wish I _could_ fly.” He sighs under his breath and Liam smiles as Lux lets something else personal about him slip.

_  
  
_

No matter how small, even something as simply wanting to fly gives Liam more insight into Lux as _Lux_ , rather than Lux the demon. Lux who likes to read and watch fantasy fiction and skateboard and sags just like Zayn... and wishes he could fly.

_  
  
_

One more puzzle piece found out of the one million missing ones right in front of him.

_  
  
_

Liam feels secure enough to squat down on the board behind him, leaning back without falling as he folds his hands inside his bent knees and watches the water float by along the ground. This is _so_ not how gravity works.

_  
  
_

He reaches his hand out into the water next to him, letting his fingers run through it, watching how his moon crescent looks so much darker against his pellucid skin that shines right through the sparkling water when he submerges his hand.

_  
  
_

The limpid streams all run into each other and overlap to create the falls Lux is forming, little waves moving under the wheels carrying them to their destination.

_  
  
_

Lux looks down at Liam behind him while he’s standing, seeing him smiling a little as he gazes at the glassy water, his full blown curly hair now flapping back on his head.

_  
  
_

He smirks as he catches a small wave and makes it whip in Liam’s face, splashing him unexpectedly. His mouth pops open right after as he looks up at Lux before shake his head when Lux laughs.

_  
  
_

“That wasn’t very _nice.”_ Liam lifts his hand up out of the water.

_  
  
_

He brings almost an entire stream out of the waterfall, trying to direct it all to be thrown on Lux but he’s is too fast for Liam.

_  
  
_

He turns around easily so he’s facing Liam on the board without a worry in the world that’s he’s facing backwards into the hell they’re racing into. The water stops with both his hands in front of him, waterfalls somehow continuing to carry them down perfectly fine, on autopilot apparently.

_  
  
_

He spreads his fingers out wide, making the water spread out so it looks like it splashes in slow motion until there’s a crystalline curtain between them.

_  
  
_

Black fire grows in the middle of it, making it all evaporate gradually, trickling away right before Liam’s eyes and turning into a misty shower that skirts across his face refreshingly, making him laugh with his eyes closed.

_  
  
_

He opens his mouth to catch it on his tongue, hanging it out low. His skin is revitalized from the moisture clashing with the heat, soaking right into each other. It tickles on his tongue like pop rocks. It tastes pretty good too. He never thought he’d ever be white enough to actually find water spicy.

_  
  
_

“Now _that’s_ a pretty pose.” Lux raises his eyebrows.

_  
  
_

Liam quickly opens his eyes and closes his mouth as he looks to the side, away from Lux’s burning gaze. Of course he’s red all over again.

_  
  
_

“Are you _always_ thinking about sex?”

_  
  
_

Lux tilts his head thoughtfully before shaking his head.

_  
  
_

“No… not really, no.”

_  
  
_

Liam finds that incredibly hard to believe.

_  
  
_

“Maybe when you’re sticking your tongue out at me and reminding me of how deep your throat goes I am.” Lux says casually as he shrugs.

_  
  
_

He turns away from Liam as he faces forward, squatting on his toes with his elbows over his knees, letting his baggy jeans show his white underwear peeking below his tank top that hikes up. Forever terrible posture.

_  
  
_

Liam bites the inside of his cheek and looks away from his exposed skin.

_  
  
_

“I’m attracted to you. It’s kind of impossible to not think about sex with you.” Lux says seriously, looking ahead.

_  
  
_

Well… that was blunt.

_  
  
_

Liam frowns a little when he gets the vibe that that’s not a good thing to Lux anymore.

_  
  
_

He’s not staring at Liam like how he usually does. Ever since he got here, Lux has been acting weird and distant. Especially when he’s outside of the mirror. He still says cheeky innuendos but he’s not as eager to hop all over Liam like before.

_  
  
_

Maybe he just gets more out of having Lux’s attention than he realises cause he wants him to turn back around towards him again, even if his staring makes him a little anxious and uncomfortable. Liam really is needy. He wants attention but he doesn’t want him to stare at him? He shakes his head at his own ridiculous brain.

_  
  
_

“You should pull up your trousers.” He mutters, doing his stupid dad thing again that always pisses Zayn off.

_  
  
_

Lux laughs a little, pulling up his jeans as Liam says while he squats.

_  
  
_

“Liam you’ve _always_ got my attention. I’m sorry that makes you uncomfortable. I don’t mean to.”

_  
  
_

He says it the same way he did when he told Liam he was sorry for hurting him, when he almost killed Liam after getting struck by lightning. But Liam avoids thinking about that night cause Lux says a lot of thing he doesn’t know if he actually ever means or not cause he’s a liar. So he instead dwells on the fact that Lux just read his fucking _mind._

_  
  
_

“Can you actually hear what I’m thinking?” Liam asks him nervously.  

_  
  
_

“No.” He shakes his head as he kicks forward at the water once to make them speed up again as the hill’s slope is beginning to change, evening out the incline is a little until they’re riding horizontally, making them lose the momentum until his boost shoots them ahead again.

_  
  
_

Relief finally washes over him.

_  
  
_

He looks back at the slope, back to the very top they just rode down, amazed at its enormity. It really it shaped like a ramp. He doesn’t feel any different going horizontally or vertically anymore. He crosses his legs like a pretzel, enjoying the ride just fine.

_  
  
_

“So how do you know what I’m thinking about all the time?” Liam asks conversationally as he squishes his cheek over his prompt up hand.

_  
  
_

“I can feel everything you’re feeling and everything you want. Lust isn’t always sexual. It’s sensual… emotional. Passionate and unrestrained. Yearning for something that maybe you’d even _kill_ to have. Even if it kills _you_. Anything. Sex… friends… attention… your lover, all of it. But before lust, I’m naturally still a mimesis.”

_  
  
_

“Like mimpathy?” Liam says, growing a little too eager to hear Lux talking about himself a little more. Lux laughs.

_  
  
_

“Yeah. Like mimpathy.” He shakes his head with a small smile as he continues to look ahead.

_  
  
_

“And how do you know that word?”

_  
  
_

Liam tells Lux he learned that word in his German class he took last year before he switched to Spanish this year. The same class he learned about the paradoxical mind experiment and quantum mechanics of Schrödinger's cat, even though the guy that got it’s name from wasn’t even German. Even in Liam’s art history class, “mimesis” was synonymous with illusionism and the opposite of realism. Something that isn’t really there attempting to appear as such.

_  
  
_

Lux smiles to himself when Liam says all that, cause he’s absolutely right. He’s not as dull as he thinks he is. Liam constantly shows how bright he truly is without realising it, and Lux just lets him carry on. He’ll figure it out eventually when the time for him to shine arrives.

_  
  
_

So Liam knows mimpathy means “after experience”, a strange blend of mimesis and empathy. Mimicking emotions like empathy but not really feeling it yourself. Like a sociopath.

_  
  
_

All of the sudden, Liam gets a faint memory of Tony saying something about how Lux used to mimic things after he saw them, like a baby, before anything else, cause that was all he knew.

_  
  
_

He thinks it’s interesting that Lux doesn’t ever directly refer to himself as a reflection because calling himself a _mimesis_ doesn’t go as deep as saying he’s a reflection. That doesn’t have any double meaning like how his words usually do. Strictly mimicry. Acting like something after you see it or imitating someone else. But it’s also the literal opposite of sensuality, which is what lust is.

_  
  
_

Lux himself is just full of contradictions.

_  
  
_

A mimesis, especially that of an image in someone’s reflection, doesn’t have any real senses or structure. Not colour, taste, smell, sound, dimension or anything it gives you the illusion of, what he sees when Lux is in the mirror. But since Lux is able to come _outside_ of the mirror and is full of senses… he’s a walking paradox. But he’s not. Cause he doesn’t even really walk here, which makes Liam almost laugh. Lux amazes him without even having to do anything but simply be alive.

_  
  
_

So he figures Lux is saying he can imitate everything around him just the same as he could in a mirror whether he’s seeing it, hearing it, or “feeling” it.

_  
  
_

Liam understands that while he can control how he looks and sounds when he mimics people, he can’t control his emotion he gets from them. Cause his core emotion is lust, which is as uncontrollable as hellfire itself. Cause that’s what makes him a demon.

_  
  
_

So his emotion reflects too.

_  
  
_

"Sadness… boredom… panic and fear, romance and limerence… feeling uncomfortable… suicidal... everything you could possibly feel and want all radiates off you and overwhelms my entire being from a hundred mile radius. So it might seem like I can hear what you’re thinking cause you’re usually thinking about what you want. And however you might feel, I’ll feel that too.” Lux says.

_  
  
_

Well that sounds annoying. Always feeling what everyone else is. That explains his mood swings.

_  
  
_

“So you’re not _actually_ bipolar.”

_  
  
_

Lux laughs as he looks back at Liam.

_  
  
_

“You think I am _bipolar?”_ He’s almost sounds offended that Liam would even ask such a thing.

_  
  
_

Liam shrugs.

_  
  
_

“I dunno… you get angry pretty easily but it only lasts for like 3 seconds so…”

_  
  
_

“My temperament might be fashioned after a storm of passion but I am _not_ anger.” Lux says seriously as he looks forward again to guide the board.

_  
  
_

“What are you then?”

_  
  
_

He doesn’t have to say that he doesn’t mean as a demon or as lust or even as a reflection. Cause Lux already knows what Liam wants to know. He’s Lux but… there’s much more to him than he lets on. Even something like what’s his name.

_  
  
_

A long pause follows for a while and Liam waits for him patiently. They’ve got a long way to go until they’re at the bottom.

_  
  
_

“What am I… I am what…” Lux says to himself, flipping the words around.

_  
  
_

“There’s this balance that exists between human emotion and nature. A juxtaposition to what you _can_ control and what you _cannot_ . _”_ He looks up at the sky, and Liam does so too.

_  
  
_

“On one hand, you can look into a storm and find calm amidst it’s eyes… but you can’t control the storm itself.”

_  
  
_

Liam looks at Lux again, seeing the storm swirling around in his eyes as he watches it like he’s looking into a mirror himself. Looking into the eyes of something Liam can’t see. He kind of wishes he could see though Lux’s eyes right now.

_  
  
_

“Everyone has that balance inside them somewhere, whoever they are, I am that balance.”

_  
  
_

“So… you’re everyone?” Liam tilts his head a little.

_  
  
_

“I am who I am.”

_  
  
_

Lux really does almost talk _backwards_ sometimes.

_  
  
_

Saying you are the “I am” is almost a direct reference to God, which Lux has said before, calling himself a God. But… if you flip some of it around, it becomes the completely opposite of it’s meaning. A question he’s asking himself.

_  
  
_

_Who am I?_

_  
  
_

“I am never angry. I am a balance between many things but never angry. That’s my brother. Everyone else is the fucking problem.”

_  
  
_

Cue the deja vu.

_  
  
_

Liam shivers a little as his feels goosebumps on his arms as a strange comment he once heard Zayn say comes back to him. Actually, it’s not even deja vu cause Zayn has said those exact words to him before. Those are _personal_ feelings. He was confused as to why Zayn would say something like that but now that Lux has, it kind of puts it in perspective for Liam.

_  
  
_

He supposes everyone else really _would_ be the problem. Being around people probably makes Lux’s emotion go haywire, throwing his mood over the edge and out of his control. He’s forced to be whoever steps in front of the mirror, whoever they are, he becomes them.

_  
  
_

The same goes for Zayn… but it’s flipped the other way around. Being around people for Zayn fucks up his vision in the exact same way as he becomes the person in the reflection too, just on the other side of the mirror.

_  
  
_

Liam hated being around too many people too but, he doesn’t really have a real reason like them. They have a lot more in common than he realised. Not Zayn and Lux. _Liam_.

_  
  
_

“What if they’re feeling pain? You’re _forced_ to feel that too?”

_  
  
_

“That’s why I’m naturally inclined to induce _pleasure_ Liam.” Lux assures him, before turning to the side a little with a smirk.

_  
  
_

“ _Unless your pleasure is pain.”_ He adds. “Morose delectation is a sin y’know.”

_  
  
_

Yup, Liam’s flushed out face is most definitely gonna be permanent. So… that means he’s fully aware that Liam gets off on almost being in pain when he’s aroused which is why he almost wants it to hurt when they have sex for the first time.

_  
  
_

He smirks at Liam when he thinks that, somehow bringing sex to his mind with very little effort as he blush deepens at the little glint in Lux’s eye before laughs a little, looking ahead again to guide the board with his dangling leg. He loves fucking with him doesn’t he?

_  
  
_

Liam closes his eyes as he blows hot air out of his mouth shakily. Leave it to Lux to make Liam hot all over with just a glance. He forces himself to stop thinking about sex so Lux goes on again.

_  
  
_

“I can coax your malaise into bliss… but sometimes I can lose control of myself to it when I’m hungry or overwhelmed with emotion.”

_  
  
_

“To what?”

_  
  
_

“The beast.”

_  
  
_

Liam shivers. Man, he hates that word now.

_  
  
_

And now he understands why Lux _really_ doesn’t like long hair. He doesn’t like feeling like a wild animal. Like that beast. Cracking Lux’s coded, double-meanings is getting easier and easier as Liam sees him clearly now the more he talks. Like he’s speaking another language but he’s allowing Liam to understand what he’s saying without actually saying it.

_  
  
_

“But _fucking_ always makes it settle back down go away for a while for me. Cause sex when you’re fucking is the best way to feel _nothing_ aside from floating around in a void.”

_  
  
_

So he has sex for fun cause it temporarily makes the hunger go away then. Like a quick fix from actually eating. And he’s still starving right now.

_  
  
_

Even if Liam understands what he means, cause he didn’t feel shit when he was having sex the very first time, it was still a strangely vapid way to look at sex coming from someone like him.

_  
  
_

“I thought you liked sex?”

_  
  
_

“Love it.”

_  
  
_

“You… enjoy feeling nothing?” Liam squints.

_  
  
_

“I said sex when you’re _fucking_ feels like nothing. Better than feeling everything all at once.” Lux shrugs.

_  
  
_

Liam understands what he’s saying now. The difference between sex when you _fucking_ each other and then sex when you’re just having sex for the sake of _sex…_ sure it can be fun but they all feel like nothing one way or another.

_  
  
_

_Unless it’s with someone you love. Then it’s making love._

_  
  
_

Liam doesn’t say that out loud as he listens to Lux.

_  
  
_

“Feelings and emotions can be manipulated easily so it’s not as bad as it sounds. As far as what you lust for goes, I don’t _have_ to give you what you want but… I usually end up wanting whatever you do anyways so we both get what we want.”

_  
  
_

“But it’s never what you actually want.” Liam doesn’t say it as a question. Cause now Liam fully understands that demonic transference cursed him too like he told Liam.

_  
  
_

Zayn’s curse is vanity. Lux’s is lust and it controls their entire lives like an illness, making their worlds just a little bit smaller with the lack of freedom to live their lives to the fullest.Cause they’ve got this curse weighing both of them down like a weight stuck in their chest.

_  
  
_

But the curse also gave Lux life. Liam isn’t sure which is worse. Being cursed to be alive but never have freedom, or never really existing outside of someone else’s image.

_  
  
_

“Can you feel or want your own things?” Liam asks when Lux doesn’t say anything else.

_  
  
_

Lux’s answer to that doesn’t consist of any words. He just laughs a little, shaking his head for a moment. And now Liam thinks his non-answers might be because he doesn’t really know himself.

_  
  
_

Cause even if Lux seems like he knows _everything_ sometimes _…_ he's still a teenager. And what teenager really even knows who they are or what they truly want? Lux has has it harder than anyone his age. Even looking into a mirror wouldn’t help him find himself.

_  
  
_

“I guess I want whatever Zayn wants.” He finally says with another careless shrug. Like he doesn’t really give a shit about what they’re talking about right now even though they’re talking about something extremely personal.

_  
  
_

But Lux doesn’t treat sex and lust like it’s personal. He seduces Liam when he’s bored and fingers girls in the middle of crowded hallways for everyone to see cause he can and casually takes virginity like it’s not a big deal and he fucks boys on park benches and in the middle of the woods and he passes Zayn’s body around like it’s free dinner for public consumption.

_  
  
_

_Clearly_ sex means nothing to him. As casual as eating a snack. But it never seemed to mean anything to Zayn either.

_  
  
_

But sometimes Lux is so goddamn immature. He almost treats it like a _game_ . But he doesn’t even really enjoy it like Liam thought he did. He enjoys it cause what the hell else is a sex demon supposed to want to do? That behaviour didn’t come _natural_ to him. His evil sister and lazy brother raised him to be an incubus. So that’s how Lux acts.

_  
  
_

“You don’t want anything for yourself?”

_  
  
_

“Lust can’t _lust_ for something. A reflection can’t have a _reflection._ A thought can’t have a thought, a memory can’t have a memory, a drink can’t have a drink, so on and so forth. These things can’t _exist_ and act independently. The only reason I can do anything at all is because I’m a demon. The only thing I’m supposed to “want” to do naturally on my own is survive.”

_  
  
_

Liam doesn’t even have to listen to the murmur in his chest stuttering for him to know that isn’t true.

_  
  
_

Well, the part about him indirectly saying he doesn’t _want_ anything for himself. Cause if that were true, his natural instinct to survive wouldn’t consist of doing what he’s doing to himself for Liam in 11 or so days.

_  
  
_

If that were true, he would’ve ATE Liam when he came to his house _starving_ the night of the fire.

_  
  
_

If that were true… Lux wouldn’t really _exist_ without Zayn.

_  
  
_

He obviously does have thoughts and memories and wishes and a personality of his own, even if he shares most with Zayn, he’s still had his own experience here.

_  
  
_

His own childhood. School. Family. His own friends. Significant others. A _life_ before he met Zayn and Liam _._ Cause he’s not just a demon to Liam. He’s _Lux._ Even if he doesn’t seem to want Liam to know who that is, Liam still really wants to. And not just because he looks like Zayn.

_  
  
_

He’s been wanting to know more since they’re “20 questions” that Lux didn’t really answer a lot of on the patio at school. And he thinks really hard about it so Lux wants it too which makes him laugh again, knowing Liam’s doing it on purpose as he stands up and finally looks at Liam again.

_  
  
_

“Okay, I think now is a good time for starting demon guiding.” he says with a fake cheesy smile, totally derailing the subject at hand like he always does.

_  
  
_

“Demon guiding?”

_  
  
_

“What you children on the surface call “learning” in school. You need to learn a little self-control.”

_  
  
_

Liam shakes his head as he smiles, trying to conceal that he’s actually really excited about demon powers now, but keeping in the back of his mind that they’re not done talking about this and making a mental note to play 20 questions when they go home. Cause Lux always gives vague answers to everything and avoids personal questions very tactfully but Liam is slowly figuring him out now, whether he likes it or not.

_  
  
_

“Okay, I’m listening.”

_  
  
_

“Okay.” Lux leans over the board a little as he looks at the running water.

_  
  
_

“Since you weren't _born_ a demon, before you can learn how to control your power, you have to know where and what exactly it is.”

_  
  
_

Lux reaches out to the side and brings a stream up to his open hand, swirling around his fingers under his control.

_  
  
_

“Telekinesis is power in your _mind.”_ Lux makes the water form into a crystal sphere the size of a baseball in his palm, tossing over to Liam, who quickly catches it with a small yelp.

_  
  
_

“Powers of the mind allows for you to manipulate almost anything outside of you, physical or otherwise, telepathically.”

_  
  
_

Liam smiles as he bounces the water off his palm as if it’s made of rubber. He concentrates on it between both his hands as he bends his head down and looks into it, expanding it to look like a rose on his palm before he makes it look like a star. Telekinesis was easy. He lets it fall on his hot skin then and it all evaporates.

_  
  
_

Lux steps sideways, over the board and plops down, sitting over the edge as his feet dangle. The water around his feet is repelled, keeping his shoes dry. Just like how the ground at his feet is repelled when he glides everywhere.

_  
  
_

“Is there a reason nothing ever touches you?”

_  
  
_

“Yes.” He smiles as he squints ahead of them to make sure they stay on a clear path. Of course he doesn’t fucking elaborate.

_  
  
_

_“Why…?”_

_  
  
_

“The ground is disgusting. Why would I ever want to touch it?”

_  
  
_

His heart misses a beat.

_  
  
_

“You walked around on _Earth_.”

_  
  
_

“No I didn’t.”

_  
  
_

“Yes you _did.”_

_  
  
_

“Next question.”

_  
  
_

Liam laughs. He’s such a liar it’s impossible to have a normal conversation with him sometimes. When he doesn’t want Liam to know something, he will fight him every step of the way until he drops it.

_  
  
_

“You know, I think you get off on being this mysterious demon but I’m gonna learn everything about you whether you like it or not.” Liam tells him.

_  
  
_

“Sometimes… it’s better to not know everything.” Lux says as he looks back at Liam.

_  
  
_

“Why don’t you want me to see you?” Liam asks him seriously.

_  
  
_

“Because I don’t want you to get _attached_ to me Liam.” He finally answers a direct question honestly, looking Liam in the eye.

_  
  
_

“And I don’t want you to be afraid of me. I get why you think you want to know my name and life’s story or whatever and be my _friend_ but that’s not gonna work for either of us. The less you loss you have to endure and the less it will hurt when you leave. My life is just as fucked up as everyone else’s and the more you know, the more you’ll feel attached and the more it will _hurt_ when you leave. The less you know the better. I already told you as much as you need to know… actually even that is too much but that’s inevitable given how much time we’re gonna be here. You just have to understand that I’m _not_ Zayn and I haven’t got a face.”

_  
  
_

Liam rolls his eyes. He doesn’t want to know more about him just cause he looks like Zayn.

_  
  
_

“Luxie, I _seen_ your face, I don’t care because of what you look like .”

_  
  
_

“You “see” a reflection of someone else's face. You _just_ told me yourself, that’s not _real_.” Lux shakes his head at him.

_  
  
_

“My “face”,” Lux does sarcastic air quotes. “Isn't really _my face_ in the light in a reality you can comprehend. It’s an illusion. When you see me outside of a shadow in that mirror, you would only be able to see your own face like how you saw before. I don’t control or see what you see on the other side… _you_ do. Scrutinising your face in a mirror will eventually make you start to see things you don’t want to see, whether it’s imperfections or _demons_ you hold inside. Mirrors are _evil._ Vanity is _sickening._ It all shows itself in the mirror. You can’t hide from yourself there. Even if I _wanted_ to show you what I look like, I can’t change what you see in there because I can’t control your mind without k--.”

_  
  
_

Liam waits for him but he stops mid-sentence. Lux shakes his head with his eyes closed.

_  
  
_

“Look it’s too _complicated_ . The only place I can actually let you see me or whatever you want to really see is outside of Zayn’s body completely or when I’m in the marsh. Neither of those things are ever going to happen while you’re here. I didn’t come from an actual _mirror_ , I came from _Narcissus_ . You look at _me_ and you either see _him_ or you see nothing. I know all that shit’s really fucking confusing for you so it's just better we skip all the bullshit and you not see me at all. I stay in the dark because you can’t see an illusion in a shadow. You can’t see _anything_ in a shadow. You’ll be too afraid to talk to me without it and I just don’t want you to be _afraid_ of me cause I would never hurt you… I don’t _want_ to hurt or scare you.”

_  
  
_

His heart doesn’t miss a single beat and that’s probably the most honest thing he’s said about himself to Liam since they met.

_  
  
_

Lux looks down into the water for a moment and it reminds Liam of the day after the fire, when he was staring at himself in lake Logea. That day would’ve been the first time Lux saw what he really looks like… well, he _thought_ that was what he looked like.

_  
  
_

As a matter of fact, Lux seemed to think he really did look exactly like _Zayn_ based off their conversation on the patio. Liam wonders what the hell happened that’s making him think he looks like _nothing_ now cause that isn’t true at all. He told Liam just because he can’t see the wind doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Cause you can still feel it. Just because he can’t see himself doesn’t mean he’s not there. Cause he has feelings too.

_  
  
_

“ _I_ can't even see myself.” He murmurs as he gazes into the water.

_  
  
_

“Everyone looks at me and they see _him_ … even me. Just cause I'm in his body doesn't change what I _am_ to him or _you_ or anyone else who sees me because I am _not_ him. He tells us what we are and that's just what we are. I am who I am and nothing will ever change that reality.” Lux glares off into space now, losing Liam a little with his train of thought there.

_  
  
_

But Liam really does feel for him, even if he’ll never understand what it feels like to be a reflection or never have his own identity. He supposes that really would make someone feel like they don’t really exist. Cause at least Liam can prove it by knowing he has his own reflection.

_  
  
_

Lux rolls his glossy eyes after a beat, looking at Liam again.

_  
  
_

“I’m an asomatous demon _…_ called Lux. Rhymes with lust… sort of. Simple shit.”

_  
  
_

Liam keeps his mind blank so his emotion isn't projected onto Lux.

_  
  
_

“I can be your best friend or your boyfriend or whatever the fuck you want me to be when we’re horny and in the mood. I can be _whoever_ you’re into. You wanna role play? Cool, I’m down. You wanna fuck? Kiss me? Vent all your emotions and tell me how you feel? Go for it, I won't mind. If you want me to leave you alone, I’ll leave. Ask me whatever you want and I’ll most likely give you just that. I’ll do whatever you want me to for the next 2 weeks. But we’re not gonna be friends. Because I’m not your soulmate or your boyfriend or your homosexual lover or whatever the fuck Zayn is to you. I’m not your _anything._ I’m in his body.”

_  
  
_

Liam stays quiet as they look at each other for a moment.

_  
  
_

“Yeah?” Lux nods for him a little desperate, prompting Liam to _respond._ Liam finds himself just mimicking the movement vacantly.

_  
  
_

“... okay.”

_  
  
_

“Okay.” Lux repeats with a tight, half-smile.

_  
  
_

“So… _anyways,”_ His brows rise as he looks away again.

_  
  
_

“As I was saying, power of the mind isn’t just limited to your own.” He continues, but Liam isn't as excited about it as he was just a moment ago.

“In someone else’s mind, you can make a suggestion they might want in their subconsciousness. Persuade them to it. Attraction. Compulsion. Manipulation. Seduction. Possession. Etcetera. Etcetera. Lots of ‘sions’.” He snorts at himself at the repetition of the sounds he’s making.

_  
  
_

_“Actually_ … you don’t really….” Lux trails off as he thinks for a moment, squinting a little into space.

_  
  
_

“No, you don’t really _need_ to know all of them, you're pretty good at it naturally anyways. Your pretty thick, that's good. Not easily swayed by everyone else.” He decides as he nods to himself.

_  
  
_

The way Lux’s face expresses and the way his eyes dart when he’s not focused on staring at one thing as he talks makes Liam wonder about all the conversations he has with himself in his head. Cause when he looks at you, it’s like he freezes perfectly still sometimes, and it tricks Liam’s brain into thinking he’s fixated with his own reflection from the way his stare penetrates through you unblinkingly. But when he moves on his own, he blinks like a normal person and his eyes wander.

_  
  
_

People whose eyes move like that, fixate on one thing or many at once, tend to be in a constant state of deep thought. And that’s just what a reflection is. A constant state and a stream of endless consciousness. The only thing that seems truly impossible for Lux is for him to stop reflecting or sleep.

_  
  
_

“It takes much more than a few days to learn all that shit if you’re not born with it. I only learned possession a few months ago.”

_  
  
_

Possession sounds like an _evil_ demon power. That’s what he’s done to Zayn. It wasn’t his fault but, still. Liam doesn’t want to possess anything.

_  
  
_

“What’s compulsion?” Liam tilts his head a little as he watches Lux kick at the ground and swerve them to the left a little, too occupied to answer immediately. After a long beat of silence, he looks out in front of him, eyes glazed over the land they’re skating past.

_  
  
_

“That takes _years_ to master… it’s the central core of desire and fixation, one sole thing driven in your mind.” He finally says. Liam figures that should be easy for Lux.

_  
  
_

Another pause follows before he narrows his eyes as he glares into space again only now, it looks like the fire inside that’s been glazed over into a dullness for a while a moment ago might be growing behind them again. _Angry_ fire this time. His face isn’t so expressive without eyes cause his emotion reflects most in his eyes.

_  
  
_

“G and Ava can’t compel _shit_.” he growls out of nowhere.

_  
  
_

Liam frowns a little as he listens to him. It doesn’t really seem like he’s talking to Liam, more like thinking out loud. Living with him as closely as he does now, Liam has learned that Lux talks to himself quite a lot. Especially at night when Liam's dozing off since Lux doesn’t sleep. Liam usually doesn't really follow.

_  
  
_

“Tweedle dumb and dumber can’t do fuck-all of what I can and I’M the one Ace locked in a fucking cage while they get to skip around on the surface whenever they fucking FEEL like. It’s utter bullshit.” He tuts as he shakes his head.

_  
  
_

“I can do _everything_ better than them, better than my entire class, and I got out AND possessed _without_ stealing a dead body and they’re supposed to be more “experienced” than me?” He shakes his head to himself again.

_  
  
_

“The underworld is a fucking joke Liam.”

_  
  
_

Liam twiddles his thumbs a little as he bites his bottom lip, realising he does know something Lux has wanted for himself. Freedom.

_  
  
_

“Is that why you wanted to leave?”

_  
  
_

“Not really for myself… it was something Xhane used to always say, that we’d get out of here some kind of way together. But, I knew at some point, I’d be ripped out of here and shoved into this body again so it was never a practical notion to entertain.”

_  
  
_

_Huh_ . Liam kind of wonders how much of the curse Lux knew about since he was already anticipating this happening to him eventually. Of course he knew about it. They both did. So Lux and Zayn sort of knew each other before they met too… in a weird kind of _predestined_ way.

_  
  
_

Cursed to be together.

_  
  
_

Liam supposes Lux really _did_ tell him with his confusing double-sided words Liam almost has to re-play in his head backwards to see what it really means. Cause he laughed when Liam thought he was trying to possess his body and he told Liam why that was impossible. He’s always been meant to be with Zayn.

_  
  
_

Liam is starting to think this is what Zayn’s been feeling missing himself entire life that he’s been searching for. Cause his _reflection_ has always been missing. And Lux has been trapped here all this time, trying to get out too. And now that Lux is actually there Zayn hates his reflection even _more_.

_  
  
_

If Lux is destroyed… Zayn will _never_ find anything whenever he sees himself. But if Lux stays, he’ll _hate_ himself… and he’ll be stuck to him forever again.

_  
  
_

So he’s got a two options for what to do with his heart and they’ve both got a double edged sword attached to a curse one way or another.

_  
  
_

“Do you know how much Zayn knew about everything that happened to him before?”

_  
  
_

Lux rolls his eyes at the mention of Zayn. Another thing Lux doesn’t like to talk about unless he's calling him Nars.

_  
  
_

“I don’t think he knew what he _knew._ If that makes any sense.” He shrugs to the side.

_  
  
_

“He dreams about a lot of fucked up shit that wouldn't have made any sense to him before. Cause his dreams aren’t really dreams.” Lux looks back at Liam.

_  
  
_

“They’re all his memories.”

_  
  
_

If he means _Narcissus_ memories, then that would explain… a lot for Zayn. His head is a library. Except one thing confuses the hell out of Liam as he scratches his head, looking to the side.

_  
  
_

“So… when you said you saw me in a dream… do you really mean _me?_ Like right now?”

_  
  
_

“A very _bad_ memory.” Lux nods with a sigh.

_  
  
_

Liam looks back at him slowly as _very_ strange gears start swirling.

_  
  
_

_“... who’s memory?”_


	10. Demons : Lux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam's meets some of Lux's demons

 

“Can you remember your entire childhood?”

 

It seems like a random thing for Lux to ask him given the topic. Answering a question with another question to stay away from the answer.

 

“No.” Liam sighs. “Not the _entire_ thing. No one can.”

 

“Why not?”

 

He squints a little as he thinks about that.

 

“I’m not… sure. It just kind of seems like--”

 

“An endless dream.” Lux finishes for him. Liam was gonna say like it didn’t really happen but, Lux’s admission is pretty spot on too.

 

Childhood feels like it goes on _forever_ when you’re there. Just like in a dream.

 

Also like a dream, there is no beginning to your adolescence. Unless it’s a nightmare, you’re in the very middle of the biggest adventure of your life, spinning around an infinite circle until you’re dizzy with joy, on a hill top at the end of the world with your best friends. Liam’s childhood would’ve been a nightmare if it weren’t for Harry and Zayn.  

 

When you’re on top of the world, you feel like you’re _invincible_. It’s the closest thing in humanity to immortality that everyone gets to have. Cause it feels like you’re gonna be a kid for the rest of your life.

 

Eventually, your big world gets smaller as you grow into it.

 

Playgrounds and sandboxes full of laughter and familiar friends turn into skate parks and locker rooms full of old bullies and house parties full of booze. Your friends are kissing intimately over glass bottles and sipping red cups instead of playing tag in the woods or rolling down grassy hills. School goes from a small escape from reality for a few hours to the prison you’re forced to visit everyday to suffer in stress and work.

 

Then at the season finale, puberty makes an unwanted cameo appearance to make your body do confusing things and suddenly… you’re a fully grown teenager, being thrusted towards adulthood. And your entire childhood becomes a distant memory you can hardly even remember anymore. Like you woke up one day and your immortality turned out to be an elaborate illusion of smoke and mirrors.

 

 _“How do you know it was real?”_ Lux prompts him, challenging him to think deeper.

 

Liam honestly… doesn’t know.

 

How can he prove he actually experienced _any_ of that? Sure he can see pictures of himself and he has a few prominent memories but… the majority is just as foggy as his dreams. It might as well have been one.

 

“I don’t know.” He shrugs.

 

“You know it was real because you can think about it.” Lux answers for him. _“Cogito ergo sum.”_

 

“What’s that mean?”

 

“It means if you can think about something, then you exist. Even if the thought itself does not exist.”

 

Liam squints a little as he nods along in understanding.

 

People can think about things that don’t really exist, yes. He gets that perfectly. Like writers who have stories in their minds that they can turn into books. The concepts in that book might not exist in our reality but the person who thought of them most definitely exists. The book itself is real and exists. The ink and words inside it _exists_ . But the thoughts that created it… don’t exist without _them._

 

He can’t believe Lux is teaching him philosophy right now and he actually understands what he’s saying. Actually Liam understands this because it’s the same idea as psychophysics and Liam has always excelled in physics.

 

Doctors used to run tests on Liam because of this, trying to diagnose why he seen things that weren’t really there in “hallucinations”.

 

“Separating physical stimulation from sensory perception in your body and mind.” Liam says.

 

“And soul,” Lux adds for him with a small smile.

 

“Good. So you understand this somewhat.” he nods before snorting. “Of course _you_ understand.”

 

Liam smiles a little too. No, he’s _not_ a dumbass. And he’s glad Lux doesn’t think so either. He goes on explaining to Liam how complex the mind is.

 

“The balance of what you can and what you can’t control becomes illusive within your mind. Your thoughts and senses can deceive you just like how _I_ can deceive you by telling a lie. Just like I can show you something or have you feel something that isn’t really there. Like in a dream.”

 

_Or a hallucination._

 

Liam’s never thought of that as your thoughts lying to you. So… thoughts were liars too. Just like Lux.

 

Lux turns on Liam suddenly, sitting cross legged in front of him as he mimics Liam’s straight posture while they coast, looking him dead in the eye. Liam swallows a thick lump in his throat when Lux stops blinking. Cause now… he’s reflecting.

 

He focuses on his words instead of his stare, listening to the murmur that exists in his empty chest.

 

“You can control what you think about but you cannot control what is a dream and what is reality. Because a dream is a dream and reality is reality. Your thoughts are that balance of what you can control and what you cannot.”

 

Liam’s brows twitch as his words echo around in his mind like a ceiling fan, chasing each other because nothing Lux says ever comes to an end.

 

_‘I am that balance’_

 

He doesn’t directly say it. But it’s heard loud in clear in Liam’s mind as his eyes grow wide a bit.

 

“Dreams and memories are just thoughts rearranged in your head. Some of them are lies… and some of them are real. But no one can ever stop thinking. Even when you’re sleeping. The control you have over your thoughts is most illusive in your sleep because dreams feel real in your head. Physical stimulation and sensory perception blend into each other in your sleep. Some thoughts exist, and some don’t. Some memories are real, some aren’t. And so on and so forth. Your mind typically can’t tell the difference. Even your sense of _time_ becomes lost in your head.”

 

Liam’s dreams were never really like that. He can always tell when he’s dreaming. Whether he’s asleep or awake… Liam can usually tell what’s real. Maybe that’s not normal. Lux has never even been to sleep before. But Liam realises _why_ he’s so knowledgeable on how thoughts and the human mind work.

 

A reflection’s got two definitions. But Lux doesn’t like calling himself a reflection for some reason.

 

“There’s about 4 main levels to your dreams weaving around in your senses. Level one is absolute loss of all your senses, when you are completely unaware that you’re dreaming, deep- _deep_ slumbers, sucking in until you’re completely immersed into the realm of sleep. Level two is the just-noticeable difference when you’re not quite aware that you’re dreaming but somewhat aware that you are asleep… which is usually right before you wake-up. Level 3 is _you.”_

 

_“Me?”_

 

“The _lucid_ dreamer.” Lux nods once.

 

“You are in total control of what you do in your dream and totally aware that it _is_ a dream. Level four is _also_ you. Daydreamers, awake and also aware of your dreaming. There’s more than 4 levels but, those are the main one’s. Because you are lucid and exist on a plane overlapping many worlds at once, no one can ever control _your_ thoughts but you because you can easily decipher what is real and what is an illusion and where you are in relation to your body. You can see everything _clearly._ Whether it’s in your mind or all around you. But for some strange reason, you were born blind.”

 

“Wow…” That seems like the go to whenever he doesn’t know what else to say.

 

He’s still hung up on the concept of Lux as a reflection. A reflection that “exists” in a mirror … and one that might not in the human mind. And then himself. Existing on planes he can control himself in and go on whenever he wants. Even in his sleep.

 

So they’re _both_ multiple things wrapped in one. Lux is a living paradox. But Liam already knew that.

 

How much more insane can this life get? Maybe Liam shouldn’t think of such things. Lux is living proof that you can actually _think_ things into existence and he doesn’t need more insanity right now. It’s inevitable that he’s gonna get more but he’d rather get one at a time with a few breaks so he can process it all and _breathe_ for a moment.

 

After each break, he can take as many psychosis-inducing bricks the universe wants to throw at his head.

 

“Zayn is the complete _opposite_ of you. He has no self-control at all. His brain is muddled and _confusing_ with absolutely no control what so ever _._ Because he has memories of things he’s never experienced himself in this life and it paves a more _permanent_ path for him.”

 

Now Liam frowns. The 180 on that one is a harsh reality to accept for Zayn. The more Liam learns about stuff with his past that’s been ruining his life to this day, the more Liam wishes he knew about it sooner. It makes him feel a little better that Zayn had at least told Jade. So he wasn’t going through seeing nightmares every day _completely_ alone.

 

“His thoughts are so all over the place in his head to the point where he doesn’t even know if what’s actually up there is real or not. Some of his thoughts were missing completely and some are in places they don’t belong.”

 

Liam’s nerves are having a dance off in his body as Lux keeps direct eye contact with him.

 

He told Liam ages ago demonic transference cursed him to be somewhere he doesn’t _belong_ . He’s not in Zayn’s head cause Zayn locks him out. He’s pitched a tent in his body and is living under his _skin._ Literally and figuratively. He doesn’t even really belong in a _mirror_.

 

Lux keeps talking as Liam’s mind silently shreds.

 

“The absence of thought itself does not _change_ reality. Just cause you don’t think about something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Like your childhood. But the _presence_ of thought doesn’t change reality either. You can think about turning into a bird and flying into outer space in your childhood if you want, but that still never happened. You know your childhood happened because _you_ exist, but the memory of that thought itself doesn’t exist without _you_. The thinker exists. But the thought can’t exist without the thinker, if it exists at all. _Cogito ergo sum,_ means I _think,_ therefore _I am._ _Ergo sum Luxuria.”_

 

Liam’s never been more blown away by the fact that he exists.

 

Lux blinks to the side, breaking his stare like an actor breaking character during a gag reel as he snorts without smiling when he says that, shaking his head. Liam blinks once too, slowly letting his brows knit as a thought occurs to him.

 

_Wait a second…_

 

Liam’s thoughts tick until his eyes widen as he unconsciously realises he just offered him his full name. Again.

 

Of course he told Liam his name. He _already_ told him ages ago, he says it constantly, nudging his subconscious to tell his dumb brain he’s been telling Liam his name this entire time.

 

 _I Am_ Lust.

 

It’s literally impossible for him not to say his name as it’s a part of casual speech and basic English. And now Liam knows the actual Latin phrase everyone uses unknowingly is his full name.

 

I am a God. I am flesh. I am bone. I am blood. I am _human._

 

His name _is_ I am without lust.

 

But his name backwards is a question.

 

_Am I?_

 

“I Am” without _lust_ is God. But “Am I” without lust… is questioning if you even exist. The total and complete opposite of each other. Just like sensuality is the complete and total opposite of a mimesis. Lux can be _anything._ Which means… he can also _be_ nothing. Which is another fucking _paradox_ and it’s going to drive Liam insane if he dwells on what Lux’s name is any longer.

 

Liam wants to know who the fuck _named_ them. Because if it really was Narcissus… then maybe he really did think he was on God’s level. Hell, he animated his own reflection and gave it _life._ Maybe he _was_ on that level.

 

 _“Ergo sum nihil.”_ Lux finishes.

 

That’s probably the one Liam hates the most that he says.

 

If Lux can be _anything…_ then he really can be nothing too.

 

It honestly doesn’t matter to Liam what he is anymore. He was kind of spent at _demon._ But it’s amazing that he’s telling Liam _everything_ by only saying very few words about his actual self. Like he can reverse even the act of talking. He doesn’t have to directly say to Liam he’s telling him his name and what he is for Liam to understand.

 

He’s not nothing. When he first met him, he told Liam what to call him.

 

He’s Lux. Rhymes with Lust. Sort of.

 

Something that is lux in English is _luminous._ Bright and shining, like light. And Lux is pretty bright as far as his level of intelligence goes. He’s Zayn’s _reflection._ Of course he’s bright. His skin is so bright, it glows like moonlight even in the dark and sparkles like fire in the light.

 

Reflections return light, sound and heat to the body it came from (Liam looked it up) but it also can be a thought, which Liam totally forgot about that being another word for reflection _._

 

 _“Holy shit,”_ Liam murmurs in amazement, _finally_ getting why Lux talks the way he does.

 

It’s impossible to know if he really exists. Even for him.

 

Because a reflection can’t have a reflection or a thought on it’s own so he can’t prove it physically. He can’t hear himself or see himself unless it’s Zayn or seemingly have his own feelings so, he can’t prove it mentally either. Being alive would almost feel like he wasn’t really at all. Now Liam can understand why his siblings taught him to act like an incubus and had him read books and watch TV. What would he have done on his own? He obviously got his personality and appearance from Narcissus.

 

So… how’d he learn how to think independently…?

 

Even if he was raised _like_ how human children are raised, no one teaches kids how to think. Not in the way _Lux_ would’ve had to. It’s impossible to teach someone how to think. But he wasn’t born as a baby. He was born as a 17 year old boy. Since the memories stayed in Zayn, maybe Lux’s thoughts were already with him and he just learned how to use them on his own. But Lux’s brother said he didn’t know how to do anything so how the hell did he learn how to act own his own if that was the case?

 

Liam stares at him with wide eyes as he goes on.

 

“You know your childhood happened because it is still somewhere you can think about in your memory, buried deep in your subconscious. Zayn’s memory will always be there in his mind. It’s just very… _vast._ Like an endless labyrinth of libraries with 1,000 years worth of information tucked away inside.”

 

 _Like a cave,_ Liam thinks.

 

Or… maybe more like a house that sits on a tall hill that appears smaller on the outside than what it really is on the inside. Cause that’s what Zayn is. So much more to him than his looks and his body. Far more than what meets the eye. And Lux too. And Liam as well.

 

“It’s very easy to get lost in but also very _cramped_ when we bump into each other. Until we get _too_ close and overlap as our separate paths cross-over into one, thinking and breathing and… talking and living at the same time when we’re in shock. Sometimes we get too close and I get random glimpses into his mind and see really fucked up things in his memory that don’t belong there. So you’re not the only one that get’s freaked out when that shit happens to us. I’ve never even heard what my _voice_ sounds like before this so you can probably imagine how weird it is hearing a voice in your head all day long when you’ve never even heard your own. Let alone seeing what he thinks about sometimes… which isn’t _terrible_ I suppose.”

 

Lux looks at Liam for a moment.

 

“I get to see you a lot.”

 

And now… Liam knows why he forgets his voice.

 

He doesn’t really have one. That little voice that everyone thinks or reads with… without it, you can’t think. Lux never heard his before _Zayn_ . Reflections don’t have _voices._ Maybe a little sound at best but, not to the degree that you can actually hear them. Cause the sound would only be your own coming back to you. Just like your own image coming back to your sight in a mirror. He doesn’t have a body or a soul or even a heart aside from his pulsing kakos that gives him the ability to let you feel that he’s really there but not enough to linger in your memory without it.

 

So when he destroys his pit, it’ll be like he was never really there. Liam will probably forget he even existed. Because he won’t at all anymore. Lux isn’t just dying in hell. In fact, he’s finally leaving. _All of him._ With his pit will go Liam’s memory of him, just like his voice.

 

He keeps his emotion numb but he quickly wipes the tear off his face. Because that is possibly the _worst_ thing Liam has ever had to acknowledge as their reality today. They can’t change reality just like the can’t change the storm or the past.

 

None of this explains how he knew who Liam was from a dream.

 

If Zayn’s dreams are telling the past, then Liam being buried alive has “happened” before. Except Liam has no memory of ever being buried alive and a star definitely can’t be buried in the ground. So how the hell would Narcissus have a memory of _Liam_ if that’s who Zayn dreams about? Cause even if that obviously never happened, Nars’ life did _happen_ and he thought about things that didn’t exist 1,000 years ago. Like _Liam._

 

Lux stands back up casually to guide the board again, as if he didn’t just silently drop several massive bombs on top of Liam’s head.

 

“Narcissus didn’t have a very easy life. It was _long_ and _exhausting_ . A thousand years is a really long time to be alive for. A lot of fucked up things happened to him in that time… way too much to comprehend at once which is why his memory stays stored in his head and only reveals itself in small, randomised strings of _tired_ consciousness in his sleep. You can’t even remember a few years of your _childhood_ in full because there’s too many memories to hold at once. Maybe not even the last 6 months of your life. Imagine holding one thousand years worth of memories in your body.”

 

Liam can barely remember “yesterday” on the surface. 1,000 whole _years_ of memories?

 

“You’d _explode_.” Liam murmurs. Lux nods sideways.

 

“... Or maybe wish you _could_ explode.”

 

Liam knows that’s his way of saying Narcissus wished he could die by the end of his life.

 

Immortality becomes a _curse_ when you don’t want to live forever. It’s like he got himself cursed _twice._ Once to reflect on his own mortality, and again to get away from that very reflection to achieve _immortality._

 

“His mind is a pretty… interesting place, I’ll give him that. But most of his dreams don’t make any fucking sense to me. I’ve seen things in his memory I can’t explain or even _begin_ to understand. I don’t know how his mind works cause he locks me out of most of it. I don’t know how he’d seen things that had never happened to him. So I don’t see a point in dwelling on it cause Zayn doesn’t want me or anyone else in his head and there’s nothing we can do about the past anyways. You shouldn’t dwell on it either or it will drive you out of your mind. It doesn’t really mean anything, people think about things that don’t exist all the time. They could be called premonitions sometimes.”

 

Liam supposes he can’t even argue with that. Even if he feels unease about _Narcissus_ having memories of him. A premonition is just getting a bad feeling about something about to happen. Similar to deja vu. _That_ right there Lux just told him… that’s way more than a premonition. That’s actually having a _vision_ of the future. Maybe Nars was psychic or something. Zayn has never indicated being psychic. If that were the case, he would’ve seen the shitstorm his life was heading towards and maybe _avoided it._

 

Lux is right. There’s nothing they can do about the past. So he shakes the unsettling feelings away from him without trying to figure it out.

 

His dreams were like that too, sometimes out of focus and making no sense at all but then sometimes a replay of actual events in his life that he gets to re-live like going to the theatre.

 

But Liam now knows that he lucid dreams like that cause his body is _pellucid._ Clear and easy to pass through and into different worlds. Even into the realm of sleep where the world of dreams exists outside of his body.

 

Sometimes Lux calls his body soft. Sometimes he calls him lucidus. Other times he calls him sunshine. He’s even called his body _beautiful,_ which was… _nice_ , if Liam disregards the circumstance of that moment.

 

That’s easy for Liam because of his amnesia - something that’s been triggering a _lot_ lately. He’s thinking it’s not really amnesia at all anymore.

 

Sure, he an extremely circumnavigational person anyways but, that a really bad habit of his and it feels like he has absolutely no control over it. Something in him blocking out parts of his memory and never retrieving them again was always another dumb defence mechanism his doctors couldn’t explain. Now, it happens randomly as it’s annoying the hell out of him, not being able to remember important things.

 

The first hell week with Lux is a huge black hole now and he'll never get those memories back. The only thing he can remember vividly from that week was having sex for the first time. His mind and powers keep getting messed up whenever sex is involved. Maybe he’s just doing this to himself and he’s just not meant to have sex.

 

But, that’s a topic he can discuss with Lux later.

 

Liam has learned that all those things that Lux calls him are the same to Lux. He’d never seen anything like Liam before and he cares about him enough to do whatever he can so his body goes back to normal. Which is… really _bad_ actually.

 

He’s also learned that the way he dreams when he’s lucid _might_ not be the average lucid dream. Because Lux told him he watches him astral project in his sleep sometimes, every other night, watching him leave his body and disappear for a while before coming back before he wakes up. Whenever he asks Liam where he went, Liam just shrugs.

 

He’s not so sure where he goes in his sleep. The world of his night dreams is just as vast as the world of his daydreams. Like he has access to the entire universe. Just in case you’re not familiar with what the universe is… we’ll just say the one Liam often visits is very _big._

 

A space full of infinite spaces.

 

It’s fair to say Liam has been a little afraid of getting lost in it when he’s outside of his body so he tends not to travel too far away from his focal points. That focal point usually being his actual body. Like travelling to a foreign country with nothing but a small suitcase you don’t want to lose track of so you just take it everywhere with you so it never leaves your sight. Liam’s body being his soul case.

 

It’s was always different a place depending on the moment for Liam before but lately, he’s been trying to delve deeper into these different worlds. Like maybe something there can lead him to an answer to all their problems. He only knows of a handful places by heart.

 

He knows where he needs to go when he’s stressed. Where he needs to go to calm down. Places to relax and not think. Where he needs to when his feelings become too much. And where he needs to when he wants Zayn. But only if Zayn is nearby. If he’s too far away, Liam doesn’t stray away from himself too much.

 

He’d love to explore it more but, when he can’t see himself… he just feels totally lost.

 

The world looks very different through the lenses of voids in space. The few places he knows of based on memory are familiar. Anywhere else - and there’s _a lot_ \- is unknown territory. One wrong turn and he might be stuck wandering around forever. Getting lost in between space doesn’t sound like it’ll be very fun. Disappearing into a void sounds worst than _hell_ to Liam. Like he’d _become_ that void and be stuck in some forever going, permanent insensibility and oblivion.

 

But that world of dreams was a really nice one, where he lived most of the time. Especially in the day. Sometimes Zayn made appearances in both.

 

Okay _most_ of the time.

 

When Zayn used to ask him what he was daydreaming about when they were younger, Liam always kept it a secret that he was dreaming about him. Being together someday. It wasn't necessarily developed in as a romantic thought as a child. It was more like limerence. Being in love and in innocence.

 

“Being together” was just a simple as hanging out at the end of the world, on a hill where two worlds collide as the Earth touches the sky.

 

He wonders how many times they’ve fallen asleep together and woke up without even realising they were both dreaming about each other.

 

“So… you’re gonna teach me all that stuff you mentioned? I think I’ve got telekinesis pretty down.”

 

He moves on with the subject himself cause thinking about Narcissus creeps him out every time they talk about him. Even though everyone speaks of him like he’s Zayn… it just doesn’t feel like it is _at all_ to Liam. Maybe because he’s heard that myth about the marsh in their town his entire life and the confrontation that they’ve been talking about Zayn this entire fucking time is just too goddamn trippy.

 

The weird thing is, it was always the story of Narcissus and _Echo._ A beautiful nymph on Earth who was cursed to only speak the last word she heard that fell in love with his beauty. She was the one that died of a broken after he rejected her since she just repeated everything he said until she faded away until nothing but the sound of her voice was left, repeating everyone’s last words forever.

 

Narcissus and _Adara_ sounds like a similar thing except the obviously wrong details. Adara wasn’t a nymph. She wasn’t on Earth. She _probably_ never spoke to Narcissus once. And he didn’t reject her. But she still faded away until there was nothing left but her memory in the sky.

 

So the confrontation that it’s supposed to be _Zayn and Liam_ in a distant past is too much for him to handle or even truly comprehend. It’s just too much.

 

Seeing his actual picture was so _disturbing_ as it is, it doesn’t help Liam. It just freaks him out even more. The less they talk about Narcissus, the better. Even if that’s not practical, Liam’s gonna avoid thinking about it as much as he can. Even though Lux just told Liam his thoughts can’t change reality and that not thinking about something won’t make it perish. He’s going to try.

 

Lux doesn’t mind talking about his past but he gets bored with talking about just Zayn in real time and Liam thinks it’s honestly _weird_ talking about Zayn with Lux too.

 

It gets a too intimate when the glass isn’t there between them or if Zayn isn’t asleep. Cause right now _Zayn_ is between them and he’s not really sleep but he’s not really awake either and this three-way relationship Liam is in dances on the thin line of platonic and romantic when Zayn is there.

 

When they’re _together_ , it still feels like the line gets smudged and makes Liam think about doing things that he shouldn’t be thinking about with Lux cause his romantic and platonic feelings get confused since his heart and mind are almost the same.

 

Fusing Lux with Zayn complicates it and he knows Lux can feel _all_ of that too. Cause he reacts to Zayn’s heart, mind and body too on top of Liam’s. It probably confuses Lux more than it confuses Liam, feeling things he doesn’t really feel for himself.

 

He looks back at Liam after the long silence when Liam wipes out the shit storm of what he’s feeling so he’s blank and not fucking up Lux’s feelings too.

 

“Honestly… all you need to learn is how to control your demon. And how to float properly if you ever want to get around here.”

 

Lux is very good at ignoring whenever Liam’s emotions start churning. He doesn’t indicate that he’s phased by it in the slightest.

 

“The ground in Lust isn’t as stable as it is on Earth’s surface. Some places are so malleable you _have_ to float above it. If you try to walk, you’ll get stuck in the pavement. It melts easily when it’s touched by beings like you and me with our kind of kakos. My core is dense and very hot, like Earth’s core so the mass of it in this body is too much for the ground. Your mass is the atoms that make up who you are and my pit makes up my complete mass. You only have a little bit of mine but even a little will do you bad on the ground. Us touching the ground here in some places can melt right through it like lava. In order to float, you just have to let go of everything. Especially the ground. Let go of the ground and you let go of Earth. Let go of Earth and you let go of its gravitational pull binding you to it. I know those are very minimal instructions but floating really isn’t as hard as it seems. Xhane can help you with the other shit.”

 

Well that explains why Lux feels like he weighs 100 thousand tonnes sometimes.

 

Liam’s gut does feel really solid sometimes but it moves around inside him like mushed up food sloshing around so it’s not too dense so he can walk without falling through the ground, adjusting to his body. It makes Liam wonder how the hell did Lux walk on Earth, cause he’s got way more kakos than Liam. He would’ve been melting into ground everywhere he went. Unless his pit is already adjusted to him.

 

Because he floats everywhere.

 

Liam snorts a little. Lux was really something.

 

Now he _knows_ something was wrong with Lux when he came to his house the first night. Cause he tracked dirt all over his house and he was covered in filth even though he’s a major germaphobe, Liam’s learned.

 

“None of your “sions”? Like possession or compuls--”

 

“No.” Lux doesn’t even let him finish.

 

“You don’t need to learn possession. You’ve already mastered every aspect of projection on your own just cause of who you are naturally, which is way harder and much more effective and useful. That’s not something just _anyone_ can do like you. I _still_ thought it was a bloody myth even after I realised who you were… until I saw you actually do it multiple times right in front of me _._ ” Lux snorts as he shakes his head to himself, blinking up at the sky.

 

“I've never seen _anything_ like you… no wonder the stupid prick tried to fucking _kill himself.”_ he murmurs.

 

Liam holds in a bashful smile. Everyone talking about Liam like he’s this _ne plus ultra_ and paragon of astral projection instead of a freak was most _definitely_ something else he's never gonna get used too. It makes him feel kind of important when Lux says stuff like that. Like maybe even before he got bit… he’d still be this beautiful star.

 

“Have you mastered all your powers?” He asks as he runs his fingers across the water leisurely, unable to stop smiling as a meaningful warmth spreads across his rosy cheeks.

 

“Every last one.”

 

“Haz said you flunked so that’s quite unbelievable.” Liam nods along, cause he knows Lux is lying.

 

Lux bends forward as he laughs, and it makes Liam laugh too cause their dorky laughter is hilarious. And Lux was starting to get _really_ distant on him. More than usual. Even if he still says random, sweet things to Liam and radiates heat, he can turn into the ice-hard _emotionless_ surface of a reflection just as easy as he can be a sexy demon.

 

With everything moment they just shared with each other, they needed a laugh.

 

Liam was glad he could make him smile just as easily as he could Zayn with his lame jokes.

 

“That academy was such a nonsensical _waste…_ of. My. Time. A goddamn WASTE.” He enunciates clearly, subtly pinching his fingers for emphasis on each pause and it’s so funny when he does stuff like that cause from behind it looks like Zayn, talking with his occasionally flamboyant mannerisms, ranting about how school is _so_ beneath him.

 

“My brother compelled me into spending the majority of my fucking life there cause he’s a lazy _ass crack._ They’re lucky I didn’t burn that goddamn place to the ground and kill ALL of those _moecha putidas._ ” he scoffs.

 

His personality is back finally.

 

Liam laughs again cause he calls Zayn that sometimes and Harry informed him it means something along the lines of a “dirty slut”, picturing Lux calling a room full of his classmates dirty sluts as he burned down his school.

 

His morbid, dark humour is actually rubbing off on Liam.

 

“My capability went beyond a reality their simple minds could perceive. I didn’t drop out because I was stupid. _They_ were. Almost everyone around me were so _stupid_ except for my sister. I couldn’t _stand it.”_

 

That’s the first time Lux has mentioned his sister to Liam.

 

“Sometimes formalised education and other’s perception of what _they_ think you’re capable of isn’t adequate enough for _you_ Li.” He says as he looks at Liam.

 

Liam can relate. Not the being too much for his teachers. The not fitting in with the way everyone else learned at school.

 

School sometimes made him feel dumb. Like a simpleton who had to be put in slower classes because he spaced out during standardised tests and moved at his own pace that wasn’t up to the standard it needed to be. The only thing he _totally_ aced was physics. So at least he kept his grades up.

 

“If you never learn anything from me, at least try to remember that there's nothing wrong with you just cause you’re different from everyone else. _Nothing._ ”

 

Great. Now he’s talking like he’s in a past tense too. But that really nice advice. Liam doesn’t want to forget his words.

 

“Anybody who ever tells you you’re dysfunctional or weird or some stupid shit like that just cause the way you were born wasn’t like them can fuck off. Chances are, they’re _bothered_ by you minding your own business because you’re probably _better_ than them.” Lux says flippantly, making Liam smile wide.

 

Spending all this time with Lux despite his agenda to keep up his façade of being a faceless, nameless, ageless sex demon… he’s actually genuinely nice, considerate and candidly funny and a real highbrow underneath all the seductive sexiness and foul mouth.

 

Even Safaa really bonded with him and smart kids like her have better judgment and perception than adults. And Liam knows all that other stuff about him anyways so they are past the point Lux was trying to make earlier.

 

It makes Liam think back to a few weeks ago when they first met.

 

Lux was so _aloof_ . Everyone was still on the brink of death that morning… of course he was in a horrible mood. He really _did_ need to get out of there for emotional distress cause he was going up against the whole fucking school’s parade of grief and trauma.

 

Then Liam said something about the way he smelled and Lux literally _avoided_ him for weeks afterwards. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stay away from Liam after a while.

 

He knows they’re gonna be friends. They already are. Liam would even go as far to say he feels like a _best_ friend… and that’s saying a lot for Liam. Even if it’s only for the next 2 weeks. Lux is telling him more and more about himself by the minute. Maybe he really will get his whole life’s story by the end of today. At least… the end of the month.

 

Even if Liam will eventually forget all of it.

 

“What’s school like for demons?” He asks. Whenever he starts thinking about Lux going away forever, he has to change the subject. It was too awful to think about.

 

“Same thing it was on the surface. Idiotic teachers. Fights in back alleys. Boring shit no one cares about that happened in the past. I don’t even really care to remember. I stopped going.” He shrugs nonchalantly.

 

“The only good thing I got out of “school” was learning how to give head and tearing up holes and in Lust with my friends.”

 

Sounds like typical high school in Manningtree.

 

“Like Alivia and Antonia?”

 

Lux shakes his head.

 

“Nah… I’ve always known those little _heathens_. They live with us sometimes. You’ll meet them eventually too. They’re geminis but, Ant always has me colour her hair crazy hues so, she’s got silver hair right now. Liv usually wears a hijab outside… like Zayn’s sisters. You’ll be able to tell them apart easily.”

 

Liam nods, a little surprised that they actually follow through with the same cultural concepts as people have on the surface. But they don’t live in hell. The live in the middle of nowhere. He pauses to squint, looking back at Lux again with another question.

 

“Why do they live with you?”

 

“Cause their mother died on the surface and is too busy heralding the dead now. And their father is a stupid _idiot_ who’s too busy killing humans and living in a fancy loft in fucking _Kings_ most of the time on the surface to pay attention to his spawn. He was too unfit to be raising twins up there alone. So Ace had to bring them back here and they became _his_ twins. He has had a house full of gremlins he had to raise pretty much by himself ever since. They live on the surface like you sometimes but they moved in with us right before I arrived.”

 

Liam’s jaw drops.

 

_It’s AVA who has kids?_

 

That was unexpected. He _assumes_ he’s talking about Ava because Kings (along with it’s twin county, _Queens)_ is in the most famous borough of New York City. _Brooklyn,_ where Ava spends most of his time. Ava struck him more as the player type rather than a young, single father who _fell_ for a human instead of stealing her body and raising their kids on _Earth_ after she died giving birth. It’s actually… sweet that he’s not a complete monster. His kids are half human.

 

Well… he sounds like a _negligent_ father actually. And he’s not really young. He’s over 100 years old. But that’s young for a demon.

 

“So they’re not really your friends…”

 

“Of course they’re my friends. Just because you didn’t chose your family doesn’t mean they can’t be your friends too. They’re just not friends I met in _school_ cause we actually grew up in the same house.”

 

Liam doesn’t really have that much family he knows of besides his mother’s mum who died when he was about 4. His dad was obviously a phantom so, he didn’t have anyone else but her, only in old pictures. But he still gets Lux’s drift because the friends he grew up with are very much his family too.

 

Harry’s Mikey was always like his big brother. Zayn’s Saf and Wali were like his little sisters. And Jade. Niall was sort of like that random foreign cousin you’ve got down the line somewhere that occasionally shows up for family dinners that you don’t actually know how the hell you’re related to each other but still have a good time with when he’s there and find yourself missing him a little when he’s gone. Anthony and Ben were that married couple that only speak in arguments that come to every occasion separately that you don’t understand why they don’t just get a damn _divorce_ already even though you know deep down, they can’t live without each other. Cher and Joey were the opposite, rarely ever detached from each other’s faces. And Louis was Louis.

 

No, Liam supposes you really don’t chose your family. It doesn’t have to be defined by blood. It’s just who they are.

 

“Like _Xhane?”_

 

Lux squints a little, before he looks back, smirking at Liam’s kind of mocking tone when he says that name.

 

“We didn’t meet in school either…” He says slowly before adding reassuringly, “You’ll like Xhane.”

 

Liam doubts that.

 

“Is he a daemon too?” Liam says as he lays his back against the board, stretching out his legs in between Lux’s feet, holding his stomach as he watches the fiery red sky.

 

“How’d you figure that?”

 

Liam shrugs.

 

“I dunno. Just a guess.”

 

It’s not really a guess. Lux told Liam he’s never had sex with a daemon before so he’s sort of wondering if Xhane and Lux have a similar situation to Louis and Zayn so he knows what he’s running into.

 

Lux grins to himself as he swerves, curving along with the wave of water.

 

“Not like you. Demons that are _born_ into their heritage like Ant and Liv usually come from humans. But Xhane’s mother was witch. Grandmother is a living goddess called Hecate. She’s a pretty powerful being.”

 

Liam’s _heard_ of her. Actually… he’s pretty sure he read about her in the Enchiridion. Hecate was pictured in there with 3 elite faces, each wearing a jeweled diadem that symbolises her power.

 

Goddess of magic and witchcraft, crossroads… and _necromancy_.

 

Crossroads because she’s said to lead the dead back across a border of vitality in sheer white cerements, like ghosts. Mother of angels. _Th_ e cosmic deity of her own undead realm.

 

If Xhane is her _grandchild…_

 

“So he’s a _magical_ demon.” Liam plays off his intimidation of meeting such a powerful entity's child with really transparent apathy.

 

Liam’s phone beeps in his pocket then, seeing a text from Harry.

 

It’s a picture, captioned:

 

**_IMPORTANT SHIT. OPEN THIS NOW! CALL ME AS SOON AS YOU CAN_ **

 

Lux laughs as he turns around again, hopping right up to Liam's head, leaning over Liam suddenly with his feet on either side of him as he gets in his face before Liam can open the text.

 

“I’m not sure I understand your fucking sarcastic tone right now babe. You got something you _really_ want to ask me?”

 

Liam sits up quickly, pushing back Lux’s chest off him as he looks at the photo Harry just sent him.

 

It’s really _old._ Black and white with that off coloured, eggshell stain over it, even the caption is smudged. He can’t tell if it says _1955_ or _1915_ or _1895 or 1995._ Or something else entirely. It’s too faded to tell even with his sight.

 

Two young adult men are smiling side by side at the camera in front of the Cocytus shop they went to last month with their arms over each other’s shoulders, wearing identical jumpsuits like plumbers. Only the shop looks like a normal house in this photo and  Harry sent with it their names.

 

The one on the left being “ _Gerald Miller”_ , demonologist standing in front of his house. And the other one… _Geoff Payne._

 

He looks exactly like Liam right now and he’s never in his life had an out of body experience _inside_ his body as he looks at the identical face to his own in the picture. Maybe it’s a weird trick of the light or a some fuck up in his brain again but… there’s not one single detail on his face Liam can’t find in a mirror. How his face is so clear and nothing else is, Liam isn’t even thinking out at the moment.

 

Liam stares at the photo and it’s caption, completely blank faced for a few seconds as his mind blanks out as well, until Lux bends down in front of him with a deep frown on his face, tilting his head down under Liam’s line of blank staring.

 

“Are you… _alright?”_

 

Liam blinks up a few times, looking ahead past Lux.

 

_Is nothing sane?_

 

Liam’s eyes focus finally as his face drains completely, seeing what he’s staring at ahead of them.

 

 _“Luxie…”_ He says slowly as his mouth falls open. Lux looks behind him as well and smiles wide. Liam is not smiling.

 

“We’re coming to the--”

 

“FUN PART!” Lux cheers.

 

The end of the ramp does _not_ look like anything fun.

 

Lux pulls Liam up to his feet while Liam scrambles to pocket his phone, although he’d rather toss it out right now. He’ll text Harry back later.

 

Lux hops back around as he pushes them faster a few times along the water before he crouches again, gearing to jump. Liam quickly clings to his back.

 

They’re approaching the end but Liam hadn’t realised the end of this hill has a huge break in it.

 

Right in between the last few hundred kilometers is a dead end shaped like a ramp that shoots straight up into the air before they actually reach the ground across the massive gap they have to leap across. There’s no way they’re gonna make this jump on this board. They can float above the ground by they can’t _fly_ _cross air._

 

“Oh my god, oh my _god_ ,” Liam shakes his head in hopeless misery against his shoulder.

 

“Don’t be afraid, babe.” Lux laughs lightly. “Let go of fear. It’s seriously holding you back.”

 

 _“Please don’t let go of me.”_ Liam feebly mumbles.

 

“I have to let go.”

 

_“I don’t want to let go of you.”_

 

“I’m gonna guide you, Li. I’m not gonna let you hurt yourself.”

 

Liam opens his eyes, looking over Lux’s shoulder at the dead end they’re approaching. Lux looks to his side at Liam.

 

“If you let go of fear, you’ll never fall. It’ll be like you’re flying. I _know_ you can do it with me.”

 

Liam looks between his eyes for a moment before he finally decides, yes. He can. He can trust Lux.

 

When Liam nods, Lux smiles, looking ahead again, pumping faster. So fast, everything blurs around them instantly. He looks behind them when the burning becomes overpowering all of the sudden until the water starts steaming before it finally combusts, skidding fire behind them.

 

Liam breathes deeply, looking back ahead again.

 

“Okay when I say go, all you have to do is let go, fearlessly!” He yells as he moves his hands over Liam’s at his own waist, getting ready to pull Liam’s hands off him. Liam nods against the wind beating against his face, eyes on the target.

 

“OKAY!” He shouts.

 

“Ready?”

 

Liam squeezes Lux’s hands as he nods.

 

“... _set….”_

 

Liam bends his knees squinting as his fingers start to slip out of Lux’s.

 

Lux jumps before Liam but it doesn’t throw him off. He closes his eyes as the board shoots up.

 

“ _GO!”_

 

[ A Tribe Called Quest - Go ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPAcUN0Jv8A)

 

As soon as he hears it, his legs spring him forward with all the strength he can muster at once, unclenching his stomach letting go of the board as it flies off the ramp into the air, letting go of Lux, letting go of fear, letting go of _everything_ except for himself and his body, which ascends high into the sky, hands up and spreading out like a pair of wings just sprang out of his back.

 

When he arches finally, he feels his chest leading him back down but instead of falling, he stops. Everything holds in the air, unable to go any higher or lower, like there’s a rope tied to his body and it’s stretched out as far as it can go.

 

His eyes open again. And he’s floating on his stomach, just like Lux said he would. And he isn’t afraid to be in the sky anymore. Cause he _can_ fly.

 

“Wow you’ve got pretty high reach,”

 

Liam looks towards the voice below him, finding Lux floating on his back and smiling at Liam with his arms resting over his belly, swaying back and forth.

 

“Now what!?” Liam shouts.

 

“Now we race.”

 

“You’re obviously gonna beat me.” Liam complains.

 

“Not each other,” Lux snorts.

 

“Although I can assure you, you’d definitely beat me.”

 

“How can I be faster than _you?”_ Liam squints.

 

“What’s the fastest thing in the universe?”

 

“Death?” Liam guesses. Lux laughs as he shakes his head.

 

“The other one, surpasses and exists in all bounds of space, dimension and time.”

 

“What are we racing?” Liam rolls his eyes cause he feels like Lux is stalling for something as he waits.

 

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, looking past Liam.

 

“That,” He finally say as he points above him so Liam looks up and quickly ducks out of the way when the flaming skateboard shoots past him.

 

There’s no way they’re gonna catch that. Not even Lux.

 

“Come one! Wherever it goes, we go!” Lux shouts as he turns over and free falls gracefully, descending like a torpedo through the air.

 

Liam’s limbs scramble as he tries to move, flapping about like he’s swimming in place cause he doesn’t get anywhere. Then he remembers he’s still making himself float when he needs to be _falling_ again. So he turns on his stomach and drops everything, beginning to freefall as he lets gravity take him now.

 

According to the aerodynamics of falling without a parachute, the fastest way to reach the ground is nose down, so Liam mimics Lux, starting to speed up as he plummets straight down like a meteor, catching up to Lux again.

 

“HOW ARE WE GONNA LAND?” Liam yells next to him, feeling the skin in his cheeks flapping all over.

 

Lux twirls around, spiralling with his hands in front of him with a wide smile that’s lighting up his whole face and eyes, burning bright in beautiful joy as flakes of embers flutter in his lashes and surround his body, like his happiness is a visible extension of him now.

 

He’s never seen him look so _genuinely_ happy as they _plunge_. Like Zayn was when they raced up the hill. Now they’re falling down one. It’s still a long way down when they get on the ground. He stops spiraling as he looks at Liam watching him with a smile, breaking him out of his stroke of awe.

 

“YOU’RE LIKE SUPERMAN!” Liam laughs, sticking one hand out as he references the famous flying pose.

 

Lux squints for a moment, like he doesn’t know what that is until his brows shoot up again.

 

“DEFINITELY GOTTA SEE THAT BLOKE FOR MYSELF,”

 

“HE ISN’T REAL!”

 

“I AM TOO!”

 

Liam laughs at his endless paradox. Even what he just said is an impossible, to _be_ not real. But everything is possible with Lux. Even flight.

 

The amount of times Zayn and Liam have gone to the cinema to see every Marvel and DC comics and Star Wars film that’s come out is ridiculous. Lux would love Superman.

 

It's clear to Liam that he really does wish he could fly. Being locked into a body isn’t freedom at all, and Liam could be the first one to tell him that.

 

 _Flying_ is freedom.

 

Lux looks down then.

 

“JUST WATCH ME CLOSELY DOWN THERE AND DO AS I DO!”

 

Right after he says that, there’s a searing hiss in the air that sounds like a whistling teakettle until misty black smoke seeps out of Lux’s skin, engulfing his entire body in black flames and shooting off as he breaks the sound barrier with a sonic boom like a jet, reaching the hill and speeding down, leaving clouds of smoke behind him that’s scent fills up in Liam, tickling in his lungs.

 

Liam squints down at him as he goes, seeing that he’s actually on his feet, running down the hill and sonic speed. He’s _really_ fast. There’s no way Liam could ever beat him.

 

As soon as he starts to get on land, he easily swings his feet down below him, smashing the ground on impact before he starts running as fast as he can straight away.

 

Now he sees why Lux told him to wear flat shoes. They glide right over the slippery rock’s edge like skates.

 

He tries to follow right behind but Lux is WAY too fast for Liam to catch up to him as he’s actually burst into flames at the speed of sound, a noise that is merging with the thunder above them.

 

He looks up ahead at Lux’s blur going towards a community ahead of them. Liam can see the skatepark where the cool demons are mingling in the park on rails and lounging in the grass, some doing their cool tricks on the ramps, flying high in the sky on their skateboards before coming back to the ground where pool of what looks like _lava_ are scattered below a few ramps they all avoid falling into. So he _meant_ that about the ground being literal _lava_ in some places.

 

He looks up at the cloudy sky, feeling that red-hot fire running right through his veins as he shoots down the rock face. He doesn’t have to blend into anything. He’s already there and suddenly, Liam realises something. Why Lux said he’d be faster than him. They may just be a couple of kids, but that makes them invincible.  

 

Not just because they’re demons. But because Zayn was born invincible and he knows that means Lux was too. And they’re all still kids in the years of their immortality one way or another.

 

And Liam is running at speed of a red-hot light he never noticed he had inside of him until this hellfire sparked it. His whole body feels like it’s blushing again, feeling his heart engulfing in flames as he watches Lux ahead of him. Neither of them have wings but they’re both flying now. And maybe that’s why Lux never really touches the ground. Cause beings that can fly belong in the sky.

 

It makes him laugh cause he’s always been afraid of heights when he’s _always_ been in the sky. But now he can see it all, not blinded by anything anymore. Not even the light starting to grow inside him that’s been blinding him his entire life. He was never _blind_. He just never paid attention to the obvious. He never realised something that’s been right in his eyes. He can see through it all clearly now.

 

The light of a star is in his eyes.

 

“ _What’s so funny?”_ Lux chirps as he’s appeared, running next to him after he’s slowed down. The black flame has died down off him by now.

 

“You’re funny.” Liam smiles. Lux squints at him, suspicious of Liam’s giddy mood.

 

“You think I’m funny looking?” He retorts in mock offence.

 

“No… but you look like someone else I know. He’s really pretty.”

 

Lux grimaces, shaking his head as he ignites in flames again and takes off, leaving Liam behind in his smoke.

 

Liam lights himself up too. It’s not fire. But it _burns_ like fire, spreading in his veins again. Not the fire itself but the embers that glow underneath it, like lumps of coal growing so heated it glows red. And Liam does just that, _feeling_ it growing inside him and pushing him along faster than he’s ever ran before as he picks up speed and his legs carry him along effortlessly.

 

He shoots right past Lux, who skids to a stop with wide eyes as he watches the _scarlet_ light beaming through the flames surrounding Liam’s form that’s zipped by, so incandescent, the hellfire glows rose around him and leaves a visible trail behind.

 

He's in _shock_ as a memory of a memory completely throws him off.

 

But he quickly snaps out of it before he bumps into Zayn and gets in a lot of trouble.

 

Cause he _knew_ that had never happened to him before. But now… he’s wrong. It’s not the first time this has happened. And he should be freaked out by the impossible, cause this is really _is_ way more than deja vu.

 

It’s an actual memory of something that’s happened before.

 

He _knows_ Narcissus isn’t fucking psychic yet… he somehow saw Liam multiple times in his lifetime. In a _human_ body… in _hell._ And it doesn’t make any fucking _sense_.

 

Unless Liam has been astral projecting into Zayn’s _dreams,_ which is what Lux suspects, a nonexistent memory is right in front of him.

 

But if this really _is_ a memory, then it scares the shit out of Lux. Cause that means… they’re all real.

 

When he gets too close to Zayn in this body, he gets glimpses of memories that have never happened to him or Zayn. And Zayn is so _stupid_ to not realise something so obviously _wrong_ with his dreams.

 

Seeing things in your head that have never happened to you before isn't abnormal at all. But when you’re aware that you have an entire _past life_ that cursed your soul and body, seeing frightening images that have happened should be _alarming_.

 

Because Liam is in the present here. But he's also somehow in his _past_ . The only thing in the universe that can exist in both the past and the present at the same time is a _star._ But Liam isn’t a fucking star he’s _human._

 

It doesn’t matter if your past life was a roach before. That doesn’t make you a roach in your life now.

 

_What... the FUCK?!?_

 

Lux only shakes his head, not even _attempting_ to figure this out anymore. Cause when it all comes down to it, nothing that happens to them right now is in his control and he’s not gonna fight it like how he used to.

 

Zayn doesn’t even want him poking around in his head even though it would be fucking _helpful_ if he just let Lux in all the way _._ He can’t force himself in.

 

It could very much just be an illusion of Adara and Liam isn’t in any real danger of someone trying to take his body. Cause that’s Zayn’s worst nightmare. Liam leaving his body and not being able to come back, going wherever his dad went. It’s the only reason Zayn let Liam stay. He’s just as terrified of Liam seeing his dad again as Liam is. Cause maybe he’ll leave with him and never ever come back again.

 

Not that his dad was a psychopath or anything. Zayn just never wanted Liam to turn into him or go away with him. It’s his worst nightmare.

 

Literally, Zayn’s recurring nightmare usually involves Liam leaving his body behind to follow after his father while everyone else thinks he’s dead, burying him alive, not listening to Zayn trying to stop them and tell them that he’ll be back over and over. Even though he knows… Liam isn’t coming back. Just one of many night terrors.

 

The sight of Liam’s exposed light isn’t necessarily a bad memory like the one of him being buried alive. It’s just a confirmation for Lux that all the stuff flashing in Zayn’s mind has _happened_ before.

 

So now, Liam isn’t going anywhere out of his sight.

 

“ _Wow,”_ Lux murmurs.

 

On a more relevant and delightful note, it looks like Liam’s time to shine has literally arrived as he’s discovered a new ability of his he’s always had all on his own without Lux having to tell him. Well, maybe Lux gave him a few hints that he knew Liam would eventually get.

 

_Light speed._

 

He didn’t know it’d look like _that._

 

Give someone’s subconscious enough gentle nudges and your subliminal message will be received by their subliminal perception. Talking to someone through their mind without the use of plain-spoken words.

 

That can be dangerous sometimes too. But, Liam seems to have perfect control of how fast he’s moving. Not fast enough to break the barrier of light. If he goes that fast, then they’ve got a problem. But, nothing with mass can break the speed of light and Liam has mass when he’s in his body so, he’s fine.

 

Cause Liam keeps it all inside him like a good boy as it shines right through his body for all the demons in the land to gawk at in awe. Including Lux.

 

 _“Fuck me.”_ He murmurs to himself, blowing smoke out of his nostrils as his own body overheats, adjusting the tightness growing below his pants.

 

Liam’s too hot for his own good.

 

And he’s heading straight towards the lower realm of Lust into a ratty old skatepark full of teenaged demons. Alone.

 

“Oh, _shit!”_ Lux takes off again frantically, almost slipping as he runs with his hands out in front of him for balance so he won’t actually fall, trying to catch up to Liam but he’s got a huge head start now. It’s a real struggle using feet like this, almost sliding out from under him as he just barely touches the ground. Even if his pit adjusts to walk on the ground. He just… can’t touch the ground.

 

It’s not that Lux doesn't know how to walk like how everyone thinks. He just doesn’t know how to walk without getting his feet dirty. Feet are delicate and shouldn't be worked too hard. The ground is covered in dirt and it's scary and embarrassing and he'd rather die before he let's Liam know all that.

 

Lux can go up to the speed of sound like thunder but he can’t summon anything _remotely_ close the likeness of light without his pit counteracting it. He loses control of his pit very easily. If he went at the speed of light, it would kill every demon in his vicinity. Because _his_ mass would eject and it’d be a catastrophic explosion of pure hellfire, wiping out anyone it touched in the fashion of a large-scale paroxysm. Because he _is_ Lust. The only place he can do that is above the storm. But Liam can easily cause he’s Liam.

 

His light is polite, contained and gentle. Smoothing down the hill in a nice zephyr with a whisper of lightning in his pocket rather than a deadly outbreak of blight and death like Lux’s hellfire would be.

 

The only thing faster than Liam is death and Lux doesn’t have time to go find _him_ . He’s never gonna catch up to him. He’s _exhausted_ already and he’s about to collapse on the ground.

 

“LIMA, **_WAIT FOR ME!”_ ** Lux shouts but even the sound of his voices are too slow to catch up to Liam.

 

“Fucking FUCK, me in the fucking ASS, _”_ He grumbled through gritted teeth as his legs kick out behind him and floats him on his stomach, hovering across the ground so he swims through the air.

 

Running was even more exhausting than _walking_ . He doesn’t know how they do it. He’s almost a _wimp_ with Zayn’s dumb body. It’s holding back the power of mind of matter cause he can’t _use_ his mind the way he needs to. Bodies are highly overrated and he ought incinerate his goddamn sister for hyping it up the way she does.

 

He thinks he's masked Liam's scent pretty well but he'd like to make sure he does _thoroughly_ so no one will get a little… over excited. Liam doesn’t smell like a demon, he smells like a human.

 

The more sinful the human is, the better they smell. Virgins don’t smell as good as the immoral. Liam’s been doing _unholy_ things in Lux’s bedroom. Recently, he smells like a very delicious, mouth-watering, _savoury little--_

 

 _Wow_ he is really hard now, thinking about how Liam’s tastes. Good enough to _eat._ Which is very bad in a skatepark full of adolescent demons.

 

If anything happened to Liam, even a _scratch_ … his brother was going to _murder_ him because Zayn would carve out his heart and kick it straight into the bottom of the abyss and take Liam back to the surface _himself_ and Ace would be _angry_ if Lux drove his bestie away again and… Lux is just _not_ ready to see Cocytus again _._

 

Seeing that he wasn’t even supposed to bring Liam outside and snuck out of the house, it probably be smart to bring him back in one piece and not _disemboweled._ It took a lot in bribing the twins to lie for him and tell Ace Zayn took Liam out in case he woke up earlier than expected. Cause Zayn and Liam sound through the house so the absence of their voices will immediately point to Lux sneaking out.

 

He’s an expert at sneaking out. Not getting caught was something he’s always mucked up.

 

When he sees his skateboard out in front of a familiar dark-tailed incubus ahead, watching Liam and Lux from the park, his heart has a little relief when he waves at Lux, signalling that he sees them and he's okay.

 

_Ari._

 

He stops and reaches out for his board, wrapping his mind around it and pulling back as it whips back up the hill into Liam’s path. He’ll apologise for tripping him later.

 

Liam has no idea where this flaming skateboard just came from but it takes out his legs when he steps on it, rolling right out from under his feet and sending him towards the ground as his energy dies inside him.

 

Before he can make himself float, someone catches him as his back falls into their chest, knocking them both to the ground with an _umph_.

 

Liam laughs as he lays his head on his chest, looking at the sky he was almost in _perfect_ synchronization with. He knows he could go faster than that.

 

“Did you see me Luxie? I was FLYING!”

 

“Luxie?”

 

Liam looks up, seeing a total stranger he’s knocked over with black feathers hanging around in the air between them. He threw his dorky fedora to the ground. Except… this boy doesn’t look dorky. He’s a fucking _Adonis._

 

He’s got purely defined features.

 

A sculpted jaw that had to be chiseled by the Gods, full lips with a wide nose with a septum piercing looping through his nostrils like a bullring. His smooth dark brown skin, as dark as the night itself, seems to shine around him like an aureole, shiny black waves of hair and wide set black eyes that aren’t so harsh and aggressive despite the abnormality.

 

His eyes are soft like a baby bird’s and he smells like cinnamon and lavender, dressed in tight skinny jeans, classic chuck taylors and a torn up thrasher mesh top - the look of your typical skater dude by with his own stylish flare.

 

A small gang of a few more demons on skates are rolling over to them from the park.

 

Despite his attire… he could be a supermodel.

 

Liam thinks he looks pretty human aside from his black reptilian-like scales on his hands like gloves and sharp claws. Also, the dark feathers peeking around the collar of his shirt… that’s not very human. And… he has a fancy black tail twirling behind him. Most people wouldn’t consider that very human either.

 

Liam quickly stands up and helps him up as well, picking up his hat for him.

 

“I’m _so_ sorry! I didn’t even see you,”

 

He looks down at Liam’s hands as he takes his hat, in obvious confusion at seeing Liam’s skin imprinting where he’s touched, splotches of red from his blood vessels dilating, moving under his skin on contact. His eyes widen a little in awe.

 

He's probably never seen a human before. But Liam doesn't look entirely human right now so he isn't sure what this demon is thinking. His forehead wrinkles a little, probably cause he can’t recognising Liam as someone who has ever come here.

 

The thin gossamer chain hanging along the curvature of his collar bone says “ _Aristotle”_ in cursive gold, stark against his dark skin.

 

He doesn’t seem angry about Liam knocking him to the ground. In fact, he probably watched him fly down the hill before unexpectedly tripping into him cause he was standing pretty close by to have not seen Liam coming towards him.

 

“Was that you _runnin’_ down there into me?” He asks coolly as his head cocks up towards the hill.

 

He speaks English so that's a good sign. Liam doesn’t have a foreign accent. In fact… this boy could easily be from Manningtree too.

 

“What are you? Some kind of _star_ then?” He smirks a little.

 

Liam’s voice is lost.

 

He’s so _beautiful,_ even his words are in awe _._

 

Before he can start blubbering, the indisputable heat that can only come from one guy warms his back as he’s suddenly whipped around to face another beautiful face, _exhausted_ as he’s holding himself up on Liam’s shoulders and wheezing for his breath.

 

 _“I… fucking hate you,”_ Lux manages to puff as he falls into Liam’s arms, pressing into him once his legs gives out.

 

Liam laughs as he lifts up his dead weight with his fingers around his bony ribs, feeling his heart stuttering against his, off it’s beat completely as it tries to calm. It makes Liam very paranoid when he feels how truly thin he is getting again.

 

His heart stuttering more than usual… like it might _stop_ and Liam is reminded that they’re still getting weaker and weaker everyday now and he’s still _starving_ until he tastes blood.

 

No matter how much heavy-petting they do, it still reflects most in his body that they’re slowly starving to death without consuming human flesh. Next month and onwards, his mood is gonna be completely _shot._ Well, Zayn’s mood will. Lux will be extremely horny. Cause that’s how they express hunger.

 

Together, it creates a very hormonal teenaged version of Hannibal Lector.

 

For now, he just gets tired _very_ easily. Wasting energy and over exerting himself like that could make him pass out.

 

It's already hard enough for Lux to breathe in his home with human lungs just as it is for Zayn to breathe in _his_ home with demon lungs. They’re in this messed up state of being in between worlds they don’t belong.

 

“Do my eyes _deceive_ me?” the teenaged demon behind them gasps exaggeratedly, obviously not surprised to see Lux as he overacts.

 

“Has the prince of narcissistic conquistadors himself actually _returned?”_

 

3 more demons approach them, one very tall and tan, one very fat, actually wearing a helmet, and the other very tiny and pale as a ghost. The fat and small demons seem over the moon to see Lux unlike the tall and dark skinned demons.

 

“LUX! Holy crap you’re really BACK!” the smallest one with stark white skin and big black wings lands in front of them, smashing the ground under his skateboard on impact.

 

“You look _amazing,_ blad!”

 

 _His_ surprise is genuine.

 

He looks and sounds fucking 13 years old yet he still completely demolishes the ground under his weight. His fancy board is made of solid gold. He lets his appendages on his back wrap around his arms and torso so it looks like he’s wearing a leather jacket now to go along with his leather trousers.

 

He looks like one of the “cool kids” Liam went to school with except Liam already likes him cause he’s absolutely adorable.

 

“I know.” Lux shrugs simply which makes Liam snicker a little, covering his mouth with his fingers lightly, then hitting Lux’s shoulder back, which makes him break into a thin smirk as his friends showering him with their astonishment at his new appearance, even though the only thing that’s changed is his skin. But then again… Liam’s not really sure what Lux’s natural form looks like outside. He imagines him not looking so… _solid_ outside of his house.

 

He takes their complements as if it’s _their_ pleasure to look at him in adoration.

 

Sure he’s conceited. But Liam likes it. There’s nothing wrong with knowing you look good and Lux _knows_ he’s the hottest demon walking around in hell right now. And Liam isn’t the only one that knows it.

 

Like the legendary and great Beyoncé once said, some call it arrogant. Liam calls it confident.

 

Lux pulls back as he kicks his own torched board up into his hands, hovering again.

 

“Xhane here?” Lux asks the first one with the golden chain. The taller one rolls his eyes.

 

 _“Of course,”_ he mutters under his breath, shaking his head as he glares to the side.

 

Lux tugs on Liam’s shirt with his free hand, moving him behind a rail of a short stone wall next to them as his arm holds his waist now, making sure Liam is close behind him a little.

 

“Babysitting your little Pipa. Only… she’s not so little anymore. You’re gonna lose it when you see how big she’s got.” the child-like bat one squeaks.

 

Lux nods.

 

“Come one.” He pulls Liam away with him. “You get to meet my youngest _niece_ today. She’s _terribly_ adorable.” He smiles at Liam.

 

That makes Liam think about Safaa. Liam realises Lux probably likes children because he’s always had a lot of _nieces._

 

“Wait! You’re leaving? You haven’t been here in ages!” They call after him.

 

 _“You don't want to talk to your friends?”_ Liam whispers as he stumbles away with him.

 

_Maybe eat something before you fucking die?_

 

Lux stops for a moment, looking at Liam as he debates something, then shooting them a sideways glance as his head tilts down over his shoulder.

 

“So you’re not gonna introduce your hot mate? Or is it a… _date?”_

 

The guy Liam knocked over sticks his fedora back on his head and lights a joint in his mouth without even touching it with a cheeky smirk directed at him. Liam’s face burns even more than it already has been.

 

His head tilts sideways as he leers, wisps of smoke floating from his pert lips like a ghost, drawing Liam’s eyes there when they wrap around his butt to take another long drag that has Liam vicariously getting a high as well, watching how his lips move as he smokes.

 

This is the first time in his life he’s looked at another guy that wasn’t Zayn and actually thought he was… really fucking hot. So much so his _body_ starts to heat up.

 

Not a lot of guys look at him like this, concentrated in an intense way that doesn’t feel like they’re threatening to beat him up. In a way that makes him _hot_. Sometimes girls stared at him but girls never really bothered Liam. Now, he’s blushing up a storm.

 

His reflexively jerks sideways when Lux’s grip on him tightens, feeling his fingers dig underneath his shirt possessively, making him look away from the sultry demon eye fucking him right now, looking at Lux instead.

 

 _“Watch_ it _,_ Ari.” His voice simmers low like boiling water as his eyes darken.

 

“I _am._ ” Ari says his name as he ironically looks up Liam’s body slowly before meeting his eye.

 

When Lux growls, deep in his chest, Ari puts his hands up innocently as his eyes leave Liam finally to toss a charming wink Lux’s way.

 

The heat over Liam’s body leaves with his eyes and Liam realises _he was doing that to him._

 

He’s _gotta be_ an incubus. Only a look from a sex demon can have that kind of effect on anyone they grace with their eyes. Would also explain his striking features.

 

Everyone looks between them with cautious brows perched in attendance.

 

They seem to have a conversation no one else can hear, frozen in their stances with Ari’s smirk poking fun at the situation while Lux’s fiery glare heeds a warning.

 

The silent brawl doesn’t last for very long.

 

Ari laughs at Lux eventually, skating away on his board with a care-free flap of his black fantail twisting behind him. Liam’s kind of upset he’s leaving… that’d really be something to see two hot demons fight over him.

 

 _“Asshole,”_ Lux mutters as he turns in the opposite direction, pulling Liam with him.

 

“So is _Adonis_ still stuck in your loose ass or are you too good for Gods now?” The tall boy asks him curiously with a slight hint of sarcasm in his voice. Lux ignores him completely.

 

“Hey, Icarus asked about you yesterday!”

 

“Tell him I’m _busy_.” Lux says over his shoulder.

 

“Luxie come on he just wanted to see Narcissus.” Ari says seriously as he twists on his skateboard in front of him, blocking him from leaving. When Lux stops, Liam sees his jaw pulse.

 

“Everyone wants to see him.” Another one chimes behind them.

 

“I’m not Narcissus. They wanna see a freak show, tell them to go to Heresy. Not _me_.”

 

Liam is never gonna hear him say “I am,” the same ever again.

 

“Lux, seriously.” Ari doesn’t have any hints of flirtation in his tone anymore.

 

They talk with their eyes again.

 

His eyes are gentle in his nudges now. Even though they’re _dark_ , they aren’t void. They have a subtle depth rather than infinite, something that shows someone is really in there and it makes Liam decide he likes this guy too. Not just because he’s really hot. He actually has a _soul_ . He’s not 100% demon either. Obviously… he has the tail of some kind of _bird._

 

Lux leans against Liam’s shoulder as his head nods back, groaning in annoyance.

 

“They haven’t seen their friend in _forever_ . You have to understand a _little._ ”

 

“Actually,” Lux looks at Ari in front of him again.

 

“I don’t have to understand _shit._ He’s not gonna remember them and even if he does, they know where he lives. If Icarus wants to see him so badly, he can make some more broken, wax wings and follow him to Cocytus after Halloween.”

 

“Cocytus?” They all gasp behind him. Even some others chattering and lounging around in the park gasp, clearly eavesdropping.

 

A heat wave sweeps through the air as thunder explodes in the sky above so dark clouds roll in at the mention of the forbidden land, raining down thick flames around them. Liam sticks his hand out and catches some on his palm like snowflakes, leaning off Lux against the rail while Lux talks to his guys.

 

“Holy shit, they always said he was suicidal… but, _Cocytus? Why?”_

 

Lux turns back towards the rest of them with a pretty smile.

 

“None of your damn _business_. That’s why.”

 

They all scoff at his sarcasm, calling him a few names as they complain in unison. Well, 3 complain. The tall one doesn’t say anything.

 

“And what about us?” The fat one asks him, gesturing to himself and the adorable leather bat demon.

 

“We haven’t seen you in forever either you _ass_. No one’s ever survived on the surface for that long! Not even Xhane.”

 

“Yeah what was it like? Did you leave Manningtree or what? Tell us what happened!”

 

Liam squints at the ground. Their awareness of the fact that they all live in Manningtree is trippy. These demons are literally his neighbours _._

 

“What was it like?” Lux repeats as he smiles a little more genuinely, finally cracking from his act of being a hard-asshole.

 

“It was _amazing.”_

 

And suddenly, all these demons have all his attention finally as he caves, gathering around Lux as he floats over a railing while the rest sit on the ground in front of him. Liam stays behind the rail.

 

Damon, the fat one with a safety helmet on and wings on his skateboard asks him about what the sun feels like and what’s the sky look like. Remy, the tiny one with two sharp fangs that hang over his plump bottom lip wants to know what his body feels like when he takes a dump, which Lux promptly berates him for even asking. Liam laugh really hard behind them.

 

Listening to them talk was like listening to aliens.

 

Luke, the tall brunette one with little splotches of dark birthmarks on his neck and cheeks like little hearts on his skin, sits with his spiked mohawk, arms crossed and totally aloof as he kicks at his skateboard with his giraffe legs from where he’s leaning against a ramp. Liam thinks he looks a little familiar but… he can’t place who he reminds him of in the face. He keeps getting a weird sense that he _knows_ him. He’d look totally human as well if he wasn’t so freakishly tall. He’s even got visible, brown eyes.

 

Liam discreetly watches him, seeing him glaring at Lux ever so often. He’s getting really bad vibes from the guy. Like he’s gonna hop up at any moment and sucker punch Lux when his guard is down.

 

And then there’s the pretty-boy, _Ari_ . The most proportionately-true to form _human_ looking one as far as his body goes with his dumb fedora that he rocks _well._ Aside from his sharp ears and majestic black fantail curling behind him, he looks totally normal. The rest are either too big, too small or too animal like.

 

Although, Ari does remind Liam of a bird in his mannerisms, the way his whole head cocks subtly when he moves and the _faint_ whistle in the echo of his voice.

 

If Liam looks very closely with his enhanced eyes, he can see Ari is actually _covered_ in scales that reflect dark in the light but they're so tiny, his skin just looks perfectly smooth and sparkly, like black diamonds. He tells them all to shut the hell up and let Lux talk. He smiles at Liam occasionally, who drops his gaze to the ground every time he gets caught staring at him.

 

Liam stands there behind the rail awkwardly, leaning back against a tree as he experiments with pulling fiery leaves from the dangling branches, holding the flame in his hand to watch them burn out into his skin as he waits for them to go, letting some of the leaves fall into the stream of water flowing at his feet. The water swallows the fire. He kind of wonders where it leads to.

 

He doesn’t want to rush Lux cause he knows he hasn’t seen his friends in a while but… he doesn’t want to stand here like this either.

 

When he starts to feel like Lux has completely forgotten that he’s even there, his hand brushes against Liam absently, moving over his lower back as he’s talking to bring him out of the shadow under the tree so he sits next to Lux on the railing, eventually introducing him to his skating posse properly.

 

Everyone in the entire skatepark is staring as they roll around.

 

Attention makes Liam nervous with crowds of teenagers on the surface already. But drawing attention around _demons?_

 

He’s not so nervous being here next to Lux actually.

 

Liam can’t really tell if it’s cautious stares because of Lux or a curious stares because of the stranger next to Lux every time someone’s gaze lingers. He’s guessing it’s just him cause everyone already knows Lux. But… no one else is as eager to come up to them than these guys in front of them.

 

If he didn’t know any better, he’d say that most of this park seems almost _afraid_ to see Lux here.

 

They stay in their respective areas, content to observe from a distance instead of bothering Lux who seems to draw a lot of eyes just by sitting here naturally. Just like… guess who?

 

Zayn.

 

Negative 1,000 points if you didn’t guess correctly.

 

Even some scary looking adults Liam thinks resembles park rangers in uniforms keep a cautious eye on Lux from a distance.

 

Liam watches Lux talk animatedly too, not listening to anything he’s saying, leaning against his shoulder.

 

Lux doesn’t really talk that much around a lot of people like he does when they’re alone.

 

They ask him something and he responds. If someone cuts him off, he just lets them talk over him quietly until they speak to him directly again. It’s a very strange behaviour Liam’s never noticed. But then again, Liam’s never seen how Lux acts around lots of people like this. He’s not necessarily shy, _not at all._ He’s just very reticent and attentive. The total opposite of Zayn in a crowd.

 

But when he’s not talking with his voice, he talks with his eyes, so expressive and vibrant in the way they glint in different lightings and along with whatever he says or whoever he points his attention to, seemingly different for each of his friends but still conscientious to give everyone equal amounts of thought and consideration. The only person he completely ignores is Luke.

 

That fire inside him that shines through his eyes is kind of like a soul. Watching him talk is fascinating for Liam, even if he’s not talking.

 

It starts to feel like they’ve been here _hours_ even though it’s only been a few minutes. Liam’s just bored cause they keep saying words he doesn’t understand.

 

“Luxie, what the hell happened to you, blad? You used to be the fastest in Lust.” Damon says in condescendence, holding onto his flapping board with _live_ white wings on the sides so it doesn’t fly away from him. Liam would love to see that thing carry his weight.

 

“Liam made you eat shit back there, we were all watching, laughing our asses off.”

 

Liam leans back as he laughs heartily, holding his ribs with limp hands when he manages to catch that even though he was totally zoned out of the conversation, feeling Lux’s hand on his back to keep him from falling off the rail as he smiles tightly at Damon.

 

“Nice one, mate. I'm never gonna hear the end of that.” He nods in mock gratitude. Liam shakes his head as he grins wide, leaning into Lux.

 

_“Everyone saw you eat shit from me,”_

 

Lux smiles in disgust as his face scrunched up.

 

“Okay, you're gonna stop swearing from now on until you know how to use them properly.”

 

“I think what he said was pretty accurate.” Ari goes for a high five to Liam, pulling him down a little with a slick smile around his rolled cigarette that Liam is pretty sure they’re all getting a contact high from.

 

 _“No one’s EVER beat Luxuria down that hill.”_ He tells him. Lux rolls his eyes into the sky.

 

“Do you want to finish hearing about Earth or what?”

 

They all nod. Except for Luke, who kind of shrugs half-heartedly.

 

“Then everyone shut the _fuck_ up about my goddamn speed before I light this entire park up and make ALL OF YOU _eat shit_.”

 

Yeah he’s not shy at all when he talks.

 

A few skaters around them look over at Lux as they ride by, shaking their heads at him. Liam supposes Lux’s empty threats don't phase them anymore.

 

“My gluttonous vacation has left me _a little_ out of shape but--”

 

“I didn’t even know you knew how to _walk._ ” Remy cuts him off.

 

“He doesn’t. I seen him slip and fall right before he got to the park.” Damon rats Lux out, making Liam laugh even more, hitting the rail as he imagines Lux falling down the hill. He wishes he had’ve seen it himself.

 

“If I stick my leg down your fucking throat and drag your _fugly_ face across the ground would you know then?” Lux hisses at him, fed up with them mocking him now.

 

His friends snicker when he threatens them, including Liam, which makes Lux’s warning fall off his glaring face as he smiles at Liam a little.

 

“This is _your_ fault.” He shoves him off the rail but Liam easily lets go, floating down on his back before swimming over with the lot of demons he finds himself fitting in with perfectly as he sits on the ground in between Remy and Damon under Lux’s dangling feet, crossing his own legs neatly.

 

“I wanna hear about you almost surpassing the speed of light! That's wicked, I’ve never seen anyone go that fast! Not even _Luxie._ How’d you do it?” Remy gushes to Liam with his squeaky, voice but Lux clears his throat loudly.

 

“It’s okay, I can skip the part about you being a big fat loser if you want.” Liam assures him as he's turned his friends against him, laughing at Lux, who smiles in sarcastic graciousness.

 

“Thanks _bean_ , for that lovely offer but this is Luxie’s _story time_ not _roast session_. So shut the fuck up.” he says with a nice smile attached. Liam gets the sense that he’s telling Liam not to say anything about himself to them.

 

He turns on the rest of them.

 

“As for the lot of _you_ little bitches, let’s just remind you of your fucking places.” Lux starts as he stands up, hovering over the rail so he towers over them all as he prepares to give his peers a speech.

 

“You are _beneath_ me because I am _God.”_ He lowers on the rail that melts a little under his hovering feet.

 

Liam and his friends laugh at his proclamation, Remy snickering into Damon across Liam as they say otherwise while Ari hits them both with his tail, leaning back as he laughs as well.

 

“I’m the only one here who has gone to the surface so I outclass ALL of you _heathens_ . Like always. You should be thanking me for gracing you with my presence. But just keep laughing your tight assholes off until they _actually_ fall off and get eaten out by TITANS down in Cocytus and your puny bodies mutilated by Dark-night Marauders while _I_ laugh in the face of your torture.”

 

 _“Is he always like this?”_ Liam whispers to Remy, who nods.

 

“A disgusting paraphiliac? Yes. You’ll probably get to witness his dense ego melting through the ground by the end of the day. I liked it better when he didn’t know how to talk.”

 

Liam’s brows knit. He wonders when Lux officially went from a mute demon who didn’t know anything to what he is right now. Out of everything he’s learned about Lux, it’s very hard to believe there was ever a time when he didn’t know how to talk.

 

Luke rolls his eyes as his looks at Liam.

 

“Usually he’s a bit more _cocky_ about going to live on the surface but, he’s already _from_ part of the surface so he’s not as impressive as he thinks he is.” He sneers.

 

Lux floats over the rail, letting his feet dangle at the ground again, ignoring Luke again.

 

“Go on already Lux, _shit_ they’re listening.” Ari urged impatiently. Liam squints at him. He says that like he’s already heard it.

 

It’s just like when he’s with Zayn and his friends. Whenever Liam starts getting disconnected and antsy cause he can't understand the Latin they keep eventually slipping into, Lux reminds him he knows some kind of way without directly saying it, looking at him or touching him when his leg sways, assuring Liam they’re gonna leave soon silently.

 

Even the way he talks to his friends is similar to Zayn only it’s completely flipped. He does the total opposite of exaggerating the story or giving too many details like how Zayn does. And Liam realises this thing with Lux keeping his life private isn’t just exclusive to him.

 

He gives them vague pictures about what it’s like on Earth and what he did and makes them beg for more specific happenings. But he just moves around with more vague detailing.

 

He doesn’t mention anything about Zayn or Zayn’s friends aside from Liam or all the “souls he tormented” or what “real people” taste like, like how they ask of him. Although, Liam thinks Lux sparing of details about _killing people_ might be because of him. But Lux gladly tells them about Liam if only to avoid talking about himself.

 

His words are very selective. He doesn’t say that he’s from Earth but “not from here,” and he doesn’t ever say they’re friends but he doesn’t make any innuendos about anything dirty happening between them behind closed doors.

 

He kind of alludes to them that Liam and Zayn are _together_ without directly saying it.

 

In fact, he doesn’t say Zayn’s name not even one time since they only seem to know him as Narcissus still, even though none of these guys were probably even alive or old enough to remember when he lived here almost 2 decades ago.

 

Zayn is a huge elephant no one is acknowledging. Cause obviously, everyone knows Lux is talking through someone else’s body right now but none of them ask him anything about the person he’s sitting inside despite him technically being a famous legend around here.

 

But Liam’s sure when he tells them that Liam is living in his house right now they can connect the dots that he’s not staying with him _platonically._ Cause even though it’s Zayn’s house, Lux doesn’t speak of Liam like he’s a guest. He speaks of him like it’s his place too and he’ll be here for a while, which keeps his stomach pleasantly warm.

 

Lux might not like _Zayn_ but Liam knows he likes Liam with him. Even before, like when he said he was basically his boyfriend, trying to get Liam to admit his obvious, _suppressed_ feelings for Zayn. Even if he enjoyed seducing Liam when he had nothing better to do with his time up there, he’s still always been weirdly supportive of their relationship… Lux is just weird in general. Liam doesn’t understand the way he thinks any better than he does Zayn. Cause they probably have the same _thoughts._

 

These demons don't know that he’s half human. He briefly wonders if they'd still like him if they knew. Or if they'd try to kill him like Ava did. Demons aren’t too fond of humans. It’s not that they hate them. Human life to them is simply insignificant. As frivolous as an ant getting squashed on the pavement.

 

He winces when a sharp pain twinges in the sensitive area where his scar is on his neck as he thinks about how awful being drained again would feel.

 

Lux frowns a little after Liam dwells on that. He makes him sit up on the railing with him.

 

He continues on with his story, although he's barely talking himself. Mostly answering their questions, dancing around concrete answers that leave even _Liam_ wondering what he did on Earth and he was actually _there_. The way Lux talks just pulls you in, literally making you lean in closer, so you can get more, even if you know he won’t give you anymore than what he’s offering.

 

“Did you miss us?” Remy asks, now sitting on his wings that are twice the size of his body when a storm cloud rumbles over the park, too hot to keep his “jacket” on.

 

“What do you think?” Lux deadpans, making some of them laugh.

 

“Well excuse the fuck out of me. I thought we’d never see you again.”

 

 _“Language.”_ Lux growls at the younger demon with a sharp glare, _daring_ Remy to swear again and in one split instance, Lux almost looks like an older brother. Remy only rolls his eyes.

 

“Why’d you come back then?”

 

Lux shrugs.

 

“I’m not staying for long.” He says, answering without really answering at all.

 

They don't seem to notice, or maybe they're just used to it cause Ari just nods like he understands. Damon and Remy look at Ari a little confused but, they just mimic him and nod as well, a little sad, without asking him to elaborate.

 

Ari seems to be the leader of Lux’s friends. He gets the feeling that he _knows_ why Lux isn’t staying. Lux and Ari look at each other without saying anything but seem to have full blown conversations. Friends who can communicate with facial expressions like that aren’t your typical friendly duos. That’s a deep bond.

 

Liam feels their sadness too, cause he knows _why_ he’s not staying for long.

 

“Well, I’m glad you finally free dude. Don’t forget about me when you go back.”

 

Lux nods as he looks at Remy with a small smile that doesn’t make it to his glazed eyes.

 

“Yeah.” he sighs.

 

Liam lightly wraps his finger around his pinky where their hands have been dangling behind them, touching ever so often on the rail.

 

He doesn’t care about second-guessing it or thinking too deep about it when all four demons look at their linked fingers with similars expressions they might’ve had if Liam had pulled a knife out on Lux and shanked him.

 

Lux didn’t react in his face when Liam touched him. Liam’s glad he doesn’t jerk away from him anymore when he touches him without warning or pull his hand away like how Liam does to him.

 

He just wants Lux to know he’s there too. And of course, Lux feels it.

 

There’s an awkward beat of silence that’s got Liam turning his usual shade of pink until Ari breaks it, clearing his throat distractedly.

 

“So how’s Dia? Or have you not seen her yet?” He forcibly moves on with another grunted rasp while he talks, blinking a few times as they all proceed to ignore the obvious tension.

 

“Still a bitter whore, probably.” Lux shrugs and the conversation resumes normally with a thick layer of smog suffocating them all. But it’s ignored now.

 

“Is that anyway to talk about your niece’s mother? I get it, your _germanas_ are fucking insane but come on now.”

 

 _How many nieces does he have?_ Liam wonders.

 

 _“That means sisters. I have 3 nieces. Pipa is my favourite.”_ Lux starts to translate to Liam quietly, which makes him snicker for no reason at all. His laughter makes Lux laugh for no reason too and everyone still stares at their hands like Liam is holding a bomb.

 

He would get their forced act of security then but… they’re just holding hands, _barely_ even at that. But it’s enough for Liam to feel Lux’s heart finally stop stuttering as the murmur flows again when he smiles at Liam.

 

Two girls standing nearby catch Liam’s eye, identical in their heart shaped, pale faces and dark bob cuts, whispering to each other. When he looks at them and smiles, they both turn a deep shade of blue as they bashfully wave at him. Lux makes him put his hand down slowly when he waves back at them, shaking his head at him with a blank expression.

 

He lets Liam hold his pinky to his content for a while until he sways their hands a little like a dance, waltzing with their fingers behind them until Lux is caressing his through Liam’s finally, silk running like water against his skin with that forever flower-soft touch that makes little bumps bloom across both their skin so they hold hands openly now.

 

Being weirded out by non-sexual but still intimate moments from Lux was no longer a possible thing at this stage in the program for Liam. Because he wants make him laugh and give Lux all the comfort in the world right now for as long as he can.

 

No one deserves to die like that. Liam would rather give him a hug but… he thinks holding his hand is nice too. A delicate way to remind someone you're aware of their presence and want them to stay close to you.

 

Making a choice to sacrifice yourself in any kind of way was probably the most selfless thing anyone could possibly do, and if Zayn is willing to do it then of course Lux is too.

 

This was _not_ how his life should end.

 

Especially when he’s never even lived fully. Cause Liam knows Lux is probably only 18 years old in actuality, even if the time to him feels like he’s been here since God was a child. He supposes spending years in hell feels like an eternity, let alone your entire life.

 

Sacrifices is what started all their problems and Liam knows that’s not the right answer to them. It’s _an_ answer but it’s definitely not the _right_ one.

 

 _“Hey,”_ Liam bumps him a little to get his attention while the rest continue to talk over each other. Lux looks at him with raised brows.

 

“Can we… talk after we leave?”

 

Lux almost laughs again.

 

“I think we’ve talked _more than enough_ to know you’re gonna be hammering me the second we’re alone. _”_

 

“Oh my god a _sex_ joke!” Liam slaps his knee in inflated astonishment, shaking his head at the others on the ground as they laugh.

 

 _“Actually,”_ Lux says over him, “Believe it or not, I wasn’t _making_ a sex joke so congratulations on joining the club of phallic degenerates. Only one last thing stopping you from being _officially_ deflowered now.” His eyebrows do his obnoxious dance now, making his way to an actual sex joke that no one else here but he and Liam are in on as they laugh again.

 

“Did you have sex with every human you saw or _eat_ them?” Luke asks, very blunt and to the point. There’s a sharp hint of hostility in his tone every time he decides to speak.

 

Lux looks at him finally, daggers sharpening in his crispy eyes. He looks at Luke with _death_ unlike the fondness for everyone else.

 

Liam hears a low rumbling in him, rougher than before and suddenly, his entire demeanor changes like a light switch.

 

Any calmness that’s been with him most of this day is buried underneath his dilated pupils expanding over his iris, looking like a pitch black void in his eyes against the white, letting go of Liam's hand.

 

Everyone quiets when his eyes change. And so does his mood in a matter of seconds.  

 

“Yeah. _Loads_. My ass was shredding, mate. I slid down into every cunt I came into contact with. You want some gritty details?” He hisses at Luke with a smile.

 

After what Lux told him, it’s not hard to figure out where this swelling anger is coming from.

 

Luke has been holding in some obvious tension he wants to get off his chest and Lux has been fine as long as he was ignoring him. But… some things just can’t be ignored. Especially when someone is begging for your attention with provocative language. It’s not what Luke says… it’s _how_ he says it.

 

“Go on. I know you’d love to brag about it like you ALWAYS do.”

 

Lux hops off the railing, getting in Luke’s face as he’s floating above the ground so he’s at eye level with the giant.

 

“ _So what do you want to know? Am I fucking him or is he fucking me? I can’t tell you both.”_

 

Liam’s stiff body holds rigid now.

 

“I really don’t care. But I’m sure Adonis would love to know that you’re back here with _Adara_ right now.”

 

Silence, Liam learned a long time ago, was _heavy._ Everything falls into it _._

 

The entire skate park is in it. Liam’s eyes are wary as he looks around, seeing everyone stopped and standing around, staring and whispering to each other.

 

_“Told you he wasn’t from here.”_

 

_“Isn’t that a lilith?”_

 

_“I thought Adara was a girl?”_

 

_“There’s no way!”_

 

Luke stands up, towering over Lux.

 

“You’ve got some nerve bringing _him_ here after every fucking thing you’ve done to Xhane--”

 

Luke’s head snaps back mid-sentence, bending back down below Lux again against his will as Lux towers of _him_ now, getting so close in his face they have to be breathing each other’s exhaled air. Except Luke isn’t breathing at all.

 

 _“Adara is dead. His name is_ **_LIAM_ ** _.”_

 

The roar of his name that skids through the heat wave makes Liam wince as it comes full circle, back around in an echo like a boomerang, bitch-slapping Luke across the face and making him physically jerk his head to the side, gagging, like Lux is making him actually eat his words.

 

“You want a list of what we do with each other?” Lux smiles.

 

“He ejaculates in this face every day. It seeps into my skin until I can taste it from the inside and it pleases me in every possible way. The same way it did we he completely destroyed my organs and it will be down my neck the second I go home. And guess what? It doesn’t matter who I’m fucking. Whether it’s Adonis or Jesus fucking Christ or any divine efficacy that falls into me. You will _always_ be a bastard half-witted _embarrassment_ to the name of all the Nephilim in the underworld and Xhane would _never_ look at you, even if I was DEAD.”

 

Luke is trembling as he’s unable to move.

 

“I _WISH_ you would say some more shit to me so you can go find your SPINE in Gluttony.”

 

Luke’s eyes squeeze close as a tear falls over the dark and distorted heart birthmark on his cheek, like a poetic punctuation to his subordinance to Lux. He pulls at the collar of Luke’s shirt and wipes his face off with his own shirt for him. And Liam sees now why every demon here seems afraid of Lux. He’s _brutal_.

 

“Don’t cry now, babe. You’ve got my full attention and this entire park, front and centre like you wanted.”

 

Luke strains to bring his head back down as he glares at Lux.

 

_“Go ahead and burn me. I DARE you. That’s all you fucking sins know how to do.”_

 

When Lux’s fist begins to smoke, Ari finally jumps up out of his stupor and grabs Lux away, his tail helping him out as it wraps around Lux’s waist and pulls him out of Luke’s face.

 

“ _Okay_ , we’re gonna separate before we start acting _stupid_ ,” He smiles.

 

Lux snatches his arm away from Ari.

 

 **_“_ ** _Fuck_ **_OFF ME!”_ ** His growl grows with his pupil, eyes fully black now and locked on Luke, set for detonation.

 

The growling rumbles like a thunderous car motor in his gut, _aching_ to come out fully. Thunder sounds above him as well, hellfire raining down even harder.

 

Liam’s skin curdles from the inside as he sits on the rail. Lux’s blaring anger is taking the temperature up around them.

 

“ _He’s vexing you cause fucking Abraxas is in Lust today_ ,” Ari warns him quietly with his mouth against his ear as he pulls Lux with his arms hugging around his chest, away from Luke and the rest of the group.

 

 _“It doesn’t matter if you’re Z. He’s not gonna be as generous as last time. You’re hungry, and so am I. Let’s be idiots somewhere less_ public _.”_

 

That seems to ward Lux off and Liam briefly wonders when Ari learned that his name was _Z_ now, furthering Liam’s suspicion that Ari already knew Lux was here before everyone else and probably hung out with him before Liam showed up.

 

After that star comment, Liam thinks Lux might’ve previously told Ari stuff he wouldn’t tell anyone else.

 

He tears his fervorous gaze away, releasing Luke from his hold on him finally, as he glides past him with Ari.

 

“We’ll be right back…. We’re not going far at all, you’re okay where you are.” Ari assures Liam so he won’t be afraid of being left alone, holding Lux’s waist as he pushes him forward, sliding his hands up to his shoulders and massaging down his arms.

 

_“You’re alright tough guy. I wanna kick his ass too but we’re not gonna get in trouble today, yeah?”_

 

Their body language makes Liam feel even more rigid as he’s ushering Lux around the corner with his claws all over Zayn’s body, his lips pressed to his ear as the go. But Liam knows he’s just trying to calm him down as best as he can. He can hear everything Ari is saying, telling him not to let Luke ruin his life and focus on him instead. Cause Ari is level-headed and Lux needs to be back there too.

 

“Tell Adonis I said hi,” Luke waves. Lux whips around again but Ari holds him in, yanking Lux back in strain.

 

**_“EAT me--”_ **

 

Ari covers Lux’s mouth before the virulent rumble of his voice can smack Luke across the face once more, his tail gripping more firm around Lux to turn him around before disappearing around the corner with him.

 

Liam wishes he could punch Luke in the face right now. _He’s_ the one provoking Lux on purpose. Obviously they know Lux has a dangerous power. _Lust_ . And they're all surrounded by it. But Liam values his life _a little_ and getting into any kind of altercation at all has never really been his forté _._ So he stays silent and makes himself as invisible as possible, like usual.

 

Once they’re out of sight, Damon turns to Luke and hits him in the arm.

 

“Do you want him to kill us all? Look at how _jittery_ he is, you know he’s STARVING!”

 

Luke glares at Damon, holding his neck.

 

“Exactly. No chance of him coming back if he acts a fool _then._ He deserves to _rot_ in Cocytus with his brother. Why should he get to be free while we stay HERE? He doesn’t have parents bossing him around. He got to drop out of school. He lives in the best place of rest in HELL. _He gets to have IMMORTALS just cause he LOOKS like one.”_ Luke shakes his head.

 

“He’s a spoiled _rotten_ little privileged asshole. Gets everything handed to him on a silver plate with the silver spoon he was born with and he doesn’t even appreciate it.”

 

Liam glares at Luke. He doesn’t think he would’ve felt so bad if Lux had’ve beat his shit talking giraffe-ass into the _ground_ cause he clearly doesn’t know _anything_ about Lux’s life.

 

Liam hasn’t even known Lux for that long and he knows his life hasn’t been privileged. He lives in hell just like them and he’s probably been treated like a prisoner his entire life because the way he speaks of his brother sounds like he’s a major control freak. He’s kept Lux locked inside a giant mirror and he’s about to _die_ in a few days and no one will remember he was ever here.

 

“ _Well don’t try to get us killed with you.”_ Damon hits him again, shakes his head with a grimace. Luke pushes up against the ramp, falling on his back to catch his breath as Damon turns to Liam.

 

“Don’t worry they don’t usually take that long.” he tells Liam as he sits next to him on the rail, holding his flying board under his arm.

 

“What are they doing?” Liam asks him.

 

“What do you _think_ they’re doing? They’re the _incubi._ ”

 

That confirmation isn't resonating so well in Liam.

 

“Lux looks like he’s been fucking starving himself again. Ari is just gonna get him sated for now.” Remy says for him as he shakes his head in disapproval.

 

Liam looks at the ground, feeling his gut churning unpleasantly.

 

“He starves himself?” Liam frowns, trying to think of something else aside from what Lux and Ari are doing right now.

 

“He doesn’t do it on purpose. Whenever Adonis leaves Lust, even if it’s for _months_ , Lux abstains from even leaving his house… you know cause it’s _dangerous_ for Luxie to be around anyone when he’s starving. He refuses to eat,see or speak to anyone. I honestly think he’s kind of a recluse.”

 

He said he practiced abstinence for years. Lux’s life has been the total opposite of privilege. He’s had absolutely no freedom to do anything. He knows Lux doesn’t abstain from leaving the house by choice. His brother never _lets_ him. And they wonder why he’s always trying to escape.

 

“Is Adonis really his boyfriend?”

 

Remy and Damon exchange identical blank expressions before they burst out laughing, hitting each other with their cackles thrown into the air as they _die_.

 

A simple no would’ve been fine.  

 

“You don’t know him very well do you?” Damon wipes his eyes as he looks at Liam, recovering from the hysterics Liam supplied him.

 

“You better not let him hear you say that.”

 

“Lux isn’t even supposed to _talk_ to Adonis. Acedia told Lux to stay away from him… _everyone_ told him to stay away from the Gods but he never fucking listens. Adonis _uses_ Lux cause he never got over his ex… fling or something. He doesn't like Lux. He likes seeing his face wrapped around his…” Damon stops when he sees Liam’s dimmed face.

 

“It’s just really fucked up, dude. I dunno why Lux let’s them use him so much.” He says instead.

 

Liam glowers at the ground, rubbing his neck. He wonders that too. Lux and Zayn may as well have been acting out their lives on two sides of a mirror really.

 

“We haven’t really known each other for that long, no.” He admits. He feels like they have.

 

“Really?” Remy says in surprise.

 

“I couldn’t tell from the way he’s all over _you._ I’ve never seen him… let anyone else touch him like that before like Xhane and Ari.” He nods to Liam’s hands.

 

“He really likes you.”

 

“I know.” Liam nods with a smile. Lux tells him all the time.

 

“Luxie doesn’t let too much of _anything_ touch him. Especially if your hands aren’t clean. He _freaks_ like a bloody psychopath when anyone touches him… even a _little_ bit. Unless you’re Xhane and Ari… or bloody _Adonis_ but that’s only because they’ve been together with him _forever_.” He holds his chin thoughtfully as he looks at Liam.

 

“I didn’t know any other lilith's lived outside of Lust, that’s pretty cool dude. Most around here are old as shit aside from Xhane, Ari and Luxie.”

 

Liam files away with the knowledge that Xhane is an incubus too. They were fighting over him so he must really be something.

 

The fact that they really think _Liam_ can pass for an incubus is really flattering _._ He feels his cheeks splotching and they all look at his skin with wide eyes.

 

“If Adonis isn’t his boyfriend then why would he abstain from sex?”

 

Liam makes himself stop blushing, forcing the blood vessels in his face to behave so they stop gawking at his discoloured pink skin that’s going the fuck through it the more he feels himself going red from their staring.

 

Luke takes this one for everyone as he sits up again, his dark brow eyes bitter in their bite, making Liam want to ask him what the hell is his _problem_.

 

“Cause he’s a sybaritic _twat_ who thinks he’s too good for everyone cause he looks like a celebrity.” He hisses as he stands up and kicks down his skateboard, looking down on Liam.

 

“He’s just as vain as his predecessor. Even _before_ he decided to start talking. And he’s gonna be put down soon. Act like a God, get struck down by one. Hopefully this time, it’s for _good_ after I tell my dad what he did to me.”

 

He pushes away on his skateboard right after his long, sour monologue to Liam’s relief. Remy rolls his black eyes.

 

“Don’t listen to that idiot.” He says seriously.

 

“We know you’re not _Adara,_ he just said that cause you’re living with Narcissus. Don’t take it personally, it’s not you at all. Luke just really _hates_ Luxie _._ ” He assures Liam, who isn’t so sure what to say to that.

 

“He doesn’t abstain for Adonis’ sake, Adonis couldn’t care less who Lux is with, he’s out fucking himself stupid on his own. Lux’s always just been really… picky cause he doesn’t like eating aether. I mean, no one likes it raw but Lux has always been a fucking _diva_ about it. I’m telling you, spend enough time with him and you’re gonna be going insane from his OCD. He’s extremely compulsive.”

 

Maybe Liam shouldn’t be asking Lux’s friends to spill all his business but the more they say, the more Liam wants to know.

 

“How does he _live_ without aether?”

 

“He doesn’t abstain from _aether._ He’d DIE. He just abstains from eating it.”

 

Liam squints a little.

 

“How else can you get it if you’re not eating it?”

 

“Lux only fucks _Gods.”_ Some random girl supplies as she skids by them. Liam’s brows raise.

 

“You can’t _get some_ from anywhere better than a God.” Remy’s innuendo is well received.

 

“They _breathe_ aether. I heard a legend down in Greed that even if you’ve got a body, you won’t have to sustain yourself with human flesh if you drink the aether from the lips of a God. He _loves_ kissing them more than having sex with them. I would too if I was good-looking enough for a God to even _spit_ in my direction. But they’re not always here so… his little picky diet leaves him to starve.” Damon shrugs next to Liam.

 

“Then… what’s he doing with Ari?”

 

“Well, Ari showed him this trick a few years ago for a way to get around eating raw aether. Not that it tastes like anything anyways.” Damon gestures to his arm.

 

“Lux shoots up with Ari so he won’t be sick with hunger until Adonis comes back.”

 

Remy shivers on his wings as he grimaces thinking about it. He thrusts them up once as he comes and sits on Liam’s other side on the rail.

 

“You might as well shoot toxic _acid_ into your veins… the first time I tried it, I got fucking _abscesses_ . They almost had to amputate my wings!” One of them lifts up to flap once behind him to show Liam a huge scar breaking the smoothness of his wing and it makes Liam frown because this little guy looks like a baby. He has no business shooting up _anything._ And neither does Lux.

 

“They’re the only ones that can stand it cause it strangles your insides almost like the asphyxiation you incubi get off on. Only instead of stopping your breathing, it _sears through your entire state of being_ . Even in your _head._ Eyes, fingers.... It’s just really intense. Injecting it is way worse than actually _eating_ it. But it lasts a little longer so it works better for Luxie so he won’t go savage when he doesn’t wanna have sex or eat.”

 

Liam’s eyes widen. That sounds like doing _hardcore_ _drugs._

 

Really hardcore _,_ injesting-melted-bath-salts-and-meth-through-every-orifice-on-your- _body_ _hardcore._ But it’s so much worse because it’s not even a drug. It’s _hellfire._

 

Stabbing prickles irritates Liam’s skin as he imagines how much pain Zayn will be in if Lux is really injecting aether into his body right now, burning his every nerve.

 

Asphyxiation can lead to _death_.

 

Immortal or not, he still feels pain just as much as anyone else.

 

“Lux knows he shouldn’t be letting himself starve in public like this. Cause then assholes like _Luke_ can take advantage of it and back him into a tight corner…” Remy shakes his head as he shivers.

 

Right, Lux has can’t control himself when he’s overwhelmed. Whatever you throw at him, he’ll throw it right back at you with the venom of a hell storm pushing through his arm.

 

“Just _don’t_ piss him off. Luke knows how to hit all the right nerves. Even if he’s not hungry. He’s never been very good at control his kakos so Luke just likes see how far he can push him.”

 

It seems like everyone but Luke are cautious of Lux.

 

“If he has another outburst like last time, Luke’s dad is gonna send him to fucking _Cocytus.”_

 

He can only _imagine_ the types of “outbursts” Lux has had.

 

 _“What’s Luke’s deal?”_ Liam whispers when he’s sure he’s far enough away to not hear them anymore.

 

“Long story.” Damon doesn’t delve any further.

 

The two identical girls Liam made blush, approach them finally after loitering on the side for quite a while. It’s clear they’ve been wanting to talk to Liam. Now that Lux is gone, they go ahead.

 

“Long _dramatic_ story, that is.” The one with the red top says. The one in blue takes it for her.

 

“Luke likes Xhane. Xhane likes Lux. But Lux only lets Gods have him so Lux breaks Xhane’s heart with Adonis. Luke _hates_ Lux for hurting Xhane _.”_  

 

“But, it’s not just about Xhane. That’s just the excuse. Luke has always secretly hated Lux’s family.” The other one breaks into it.

 

“Lux’s brother _destroyed_ Luke’s brother forever ago. So their families beef was destined to come down to Luke vs. Luxie.”

 

_Ira._

 

Liam starts to wonder if Lux has actually ever met his older brother.

 

“Luke’s been trying to get Abraxas to send Lux to Cocytus since their little love triangle happened. He’s been in a jealous state of permanent loathing ever since everyone found out that Lux took Xhane’s virginity a few years ago.”

 

Great. So they’ve got the same intricately _fucked_ issues Zayn has always had with most of his friends.

 

Another fact about sex Liam has learned. It complicates _everything._ For teenaged demons _and_ humans across the universe alike.

 

“Why Cocytus?” Liam asks.

 

“Cause that’s where all the most dangerous go, duh.”

 

“No why _Lux_ to Cocytus _?_ What’s dangerous?” Liam clarifies.

 

“Have you never met Lux? He’s _explosive!”_ Damon exclaims standing up again to emphasise it with exploding arms his expands outwards.

 

The twin girls continue for him, taking turns finishing each other’s thought and Liam thinks these girls are Gemini’s now that he read about. Twin demon’s who share a single conscious.

 

“Last year, he fell off a ramp and someone tried to help him up and he literally almost burned the entire park down cause he thought their hands were dirty. He’s too emotional, he could kill everyone in a matter of seconds, that’s what dangerous! He was classed with the “high-risks,” by Acedia _when he first got here_.”

 

“He’s just like his mental brother. Lux is too _hazardous_ to be left alone or around demons without attendance.”

 

“Acedia was gonna just give him to the keeper to deal with but Abraxas was always at his house anyways so they let him stay at home. He was so much easier to control when he didn’t know how to do anything. Then one day out of nowhere, he almost kills some guy for getting too close to him. Ever since his brother got in trouble, he’s _always_ had his eye on Luxuria cause his family has a history of being a bit _murderous…_ Lux shows high probability of being just like his brother, probably inherited from Narcissus. So Lux is a little more vulnerable to getting caught since he’s always being watched anyways unless he goes to the surface.”

 

“Look at his fucking _family._ They should be _banned_ from Lust, it shouldn’t matter _who_ they came from! The only reason they get so many passes is because of Nars and it’s not fair. Luke would be doing us a favour. Luxuria is a danger to _all_ our safety.” Some dork in glasses with an even dorkier scooter decides to add his 2 cents that no one asked for. But many around him nod in agreement.

 

It’s probably a known fact that Narcissus tried to kill himself multiple times before he got here. Whether it was intentional or not, that still counts as murderous to them.

 

You’re not supposed to send for death, it comes to _you_. Luckily, he’s a very charming boy so the his thoughtless delinquency got excused. Seems the same has gone for Lux.

 

A small crowd has formed around them by now as everyone starts gossiping about Lux and his family. Liam learns in the midst of it all that Abraxas is the name of the keeper of demons who dictates which level of hell everyone belongs in that Lux is gonna have to answer to, along with _The_ keeper, if he messes around and kills someone here. Abraxas also happens to be Luke’s father.

 

Apparently, just like death and seemingly every other important figure in hell, Narcissus was pretty good friends with the keeper of demons himself. And Liam starting to think this guy is probably what those dumb witches are calling the morning star. Cause his friends come and go from his house constantly. He would’ve been there 400 years ago.

 

It’s not concrete but… he has an inkling that these are connected. Harry said something about the God of dark magic also being the king of demons and that he’s got many names. Calling himself Satan seems too obvious. Abraxas still sounds a bit evil by itself though.

 

Maybe if Liam did some investigating himself he could get some information for Harry since he’s trying to figure out what the fuck is happening in hell _and_ the surface. He can be Harry’s legs. Although Abraxas lives in the tower at the edge of Lust cause it connects every level of hell like a shaft so he can travel all over the underworld.

 

Liam definitely can’t go alone.

 

“So… are you _dating_ Narcissus?” Remy asks Liam from the ground, what everyone has been wondering, breaking him out of his deep thought after he’d completely lost whatever everyone was talking about.

 

Liam smiles as he nods. He _knew_ they picked that up. Lux is so sly.

 

“He doesn’t really go by such a fancy name anymore.”

 

“Oh yeah, it’s Malik right?” Damon asks. “Zayn Malik.”

 

Liam looks at him with a slight frown.

 

“Where’d you hear that?”

 

“Our teacher, Acedia, told us _years_ ago. He said Narcissus was gonna come back soon and wanna be called Z when he got here. Just in case we ever saw him around in person so we’d know what he prefers to be called so he feels at home again.”

 

 _“... years?”_ Liam repeats slowly. Remy nods.

 

“I think Acedia wants him to stay longer than he did last time.”

 

Liam feels unease growing again. They say Ace knows everything but…. how would he have known Zayn’s name years ago? Unless…

 

No. Liam shakes that stupid thought out of his head. He _knows_ Zayn has never come here before. There’s no way… _right?_ And why would Ace want Zayn to stay longer?

 

1,000 years isn’t a friendly visit with old friends. That’s over staying your fucking welcome as far as Liam is concerned and he’ll be damned if Zayn is staying here for another millennium.

 

They all continue to talk around him as his thoughts fly off into outer space to get lost in as more shit piles up on the already moldy shit he still doesn’t even have sorted yet.

 

There’s too many fucking problems here.

 

Now he has to worry about some of Zayn’s demons being in cahoots with the devil to keep him here? He gets that everyone wants him but _shit._ No wonder Zayn can’t fucking breath well now. _Everything_ is suffocating him.

 

Liam wishes Lux would come back so they can leave.

 

He doesn’t even care if he’s shooting up right now. If that what he does to survive so he won’t have to eat people or fuck himself silly, Liam won’t judge him for it. He just wants to see him now.

 

These demons, aside from Damon and Remy, aren’t too fond of Lux at all and it’s making him want to get away from hearing people talk shit about him right in his face. It reminds him of being in the locker rooms.

 

“I seen him walking to the Tower last month. He looked right at me and smiled! His eyes are _so_ colourful. _Dead_ gorgeous, he is.” some girl raves dreamily

 

Liam smiles tenderhearted when he catches that one as he looks into his hands, feeling a light flush as he listens to them talking about Zayn now.

 

 _“Handsome boy.”_ He murmurs to himself.

 

Apparently, Lux wasn’t typically allowed to come here, or anywhere else, unattended.

 

If Liam was being watched like an animal at the zoo constantly, he’d probably start sneaking around too. But since he’s with Zayn right now, the authorities aren’t bothering him cause Zayn really _is_ above certain laws here.

 

Humans may be seen as a lower species to demons but _immortals_ aren’t seen as human. They’re almost equivalent to _Gods_ to these guys. Zayn is more than just a celebrity. He’s in ranking with Gods in hell. Hearing how highly they regard him with is so surreal compared to how they talk down on Lux. They might as well not even be talking about Zayn as far as how well Liam’s brain is registering it all goes.

 

“Okay, this is the million mark question guys.” Luke suddenly comes back, drawing all the attention now as crouches down in the centre of the crowd with a mischievous grin.

 

“Who do you think Adonis is more fucked up over? Narcissus the disdainful… or his evil twin, Luxuria the Incubus?”

 

“Narcissus.” Remy says with hesitation, nodding his head in certainty. “ _Hands down.”_

 

“Ummm no. It’s definitely Luxie. They actually get to _fuck.”_ Damon counters.

 

 _“Because he looks like Narcissus.”_ Luke says slowly.

 

“Adonis doesn’t actually like _Lux_. He’s just the imitation. Zayn is the real deal. Imagine if they reunited?”

 

Is Liam suddenly invisible? He decides for himself that Luke is the biggest asshole here. He doesn’t like hearing Zayn’s name in his mouth. It doesn’t belong there.

 

“Did none of you actually _read_ our history books? They said Adonis vowed to give Narcissus all the stars and love in the universe and he _still_ rejected him. He’s never said anything like that to Luxie and you know it. The only reason he gets to hang out with the rich and famous is cause he’s pretty to look at. That little cunt got lucky.”

 

Luke calling him Luxie for some reason makes Liam think he hasn’t _always_ hated Lux. That’s a term of endearment only the people closest to him use. They used to be friends.

 

“If you can’t say that to his face, then just shut up, Luke.” Damon says seriously in Lux’s defence.

 

Liam finds himself nodding a little in agreement. He’d _love_ to see Luke try to say that to Lux’s _face_.

 

 _“Honestly_ , get over it. We get it, you’re hate him. He’s leaving and we’re never gonna see him again. He’s out of your life _forever._ ”

 

“I hope he _dies_ .” Luke gives him a simple shrug, blunt in the way he casually wishes death upon someone he doesn’t even know is _actually_ dying.

 

“All of you _know_ he won’t survive up there on his own cause Narcissus will eventually kill that body off again before he can even turn 18 _._ We’ll see how _Godly_ he is then when Nars comes back _without_ Lux. As they say, you kill yourself in one life, you’ll keep doing it forever. One less suicidal _freak_ running around here making everyone nervous about his demon bombing the place. _Cunni faexnigre_ _.”_

 

The amount of gasps that erupt when he says that let’s Liam know whatever he just called Lux was probably just as bad as all the terrible things people like Tyler Quinn called Zayn all the time. This asshole needed to _eat it._

 

He’s not gonna fight him. Zayn is the fighter. He’s just gonna give him a piece a his mind.

 

“Who are you?” Liam feels himself asking before he can stop himself. Everyone looks at him.

 

“What?” Luke cocks his head, rubbing the three hearts under his chin on his neck in confusion, thinking he didn’t hear that correctly.

 

A clock ticks in Liam’s head slowly as he paces himself to stay calm and not give in to the panic or adrenaline.

 

“I said,” it ticks two times, making his heart pound as he gathers words _“Who. Are. You.”_

 

Luke blinks for a moment before he breaks into a laugh, looking around him like Liam isn’t talking to him.

 

“Who am _I?”_ He repeats the question. Liam nods.

 

“Yeah. Wishing death on people you don’t even know. I dunno who you _think_ you are but you must think you’re _God.”_

 

Luke may know Lux, but he definitely doesn’t know Zayn and talking shit about him in front of Liam isn’t gonna fly.

 

The boldness in Liam is pushing an adrenaline rush anyways. He knows he’s risking his life right now but he’s done sitting around listening to people talk down on him, Zayn or even Lux. He’s been sitting in silence and taking beatings without fighting back majority of his life. No more.

 

Luke stands up slowly and Liam swears he grows in size, leaving dents in the pavement where he was sitting.

 

“Go on _pink boy._ Tell me more of who I _think_ I am.”

 

Liam looks down at Remy and Damon who catch his eye as they’ve moved to the ground again, getting out of the way. They’re both discreetly making faces at Liam, shaking their heads quickly and gesturing across their throats frantically with pinched lips, telling Liam to shut the hell up.

 

Liam just looks back at Luke and shrugs.

 

“Okay.” He says simply. Luke motivated so… Liam’s moving.

 

“You seem like you’re so stuck in your own darkness to the point that you’re actually ready to die in it and it would be sad but you say such nasty shit I can’t even manage to feel sorry for you.”

 

No one but the thunder says anything so Liam keeps going.

 

“You can blame Xhane or your dead brother or Lux all you want but no one can be held responsible for your suffering but you cause you _want_ it. And you want Lux to give it to you more.”

 

There’s more audible gasps at the ice cold words but Luke stays frozen. And Liam pushes on.

 

“The way you talk to him s _creams_ that you’re just as suicidal as the ones you talk down on with your freakish giraffe neck that still isn’t tall enough to put you on God’s level, cause you still have to look _up_ as high as the hill he lives on to talk down on Lux and that must really kill you that’s he’s better than you in every possible way by _existing_ . You will say _anything_ to get Lux to be the one to put you out of your suffocating misery but he’s not so easily manipulated just cause you hate his guts. The only one here that is ever gonna get under his skin deep enough for him to feel it _in_ those guts is _me._ The fact that you _think_ you can is actually hilarious in just the half hour I’ve heard the shit dropping out of your mouth. So are you a toilet? I’m genuinely curious who the hell you think you are to talk about someone that’s _mine_.”

 

It was _very_ cocky compared to his usual self but Liam’s show of valiance and bravery started to feel a little more real and purposeful the more he went on. Cause he’s never been a fighter at all before but lately, this is the first time he’s felt like there was something _worth_ fighting for.

 

Luke’s body grows in size even more, his face set - firm - as his eyes go from stunned to _black_ like the demon really he is underneath his giant human disguise.

 

Liam’s composure sits still, in total control of his emotion that is officially unfazed by everything now. Not even the demon transforming into a giant right in front of him.

 

“‘right, bruv. You don’t know who the fuck you’re _talking_ to.”

 

“You’re definitely _not_ my brother.” He retorts, almost disgusted by the concept.

 

A few people laugh around them. Liam snorts too. He’s not usually this sassy but he swears this hellfire is inflating him like a hot-air balloon. Maybe he’s high.

 

“You know… you guys kind of look alike.” A girl chimes behind Luke. Others around them agree.

 

Liam stops smiling then. Not because Luke is approaching him now - he’s not scared of him. But that disturbing comment makes Liam realise Luke looks so familiar because he reminds Liam of _himself._

 

Unlike everyone else, he’s got real _eyes_ , dark brown like Liam’s and his features look strikingly similar to his own… even the _birthmarks_ all over his face look just like the one’s covering different parts of Liam’s body.

 

Now he really does want to know who the hell the dude is and why does he look like they could actually be _related._

 

Before Luke can get one hand on Liam, a tumultuous explosion crashes behind them as if a meteor just hit the ground, rocking demons off their balance.

 

It’s followed immediately by a long billow of fire erupting from a massive crack opening in the ground between Luke and Liam that separates them, making everyone jump out of the way as they scream. Liam almost falls off the rail from how much the ground shakes, holding his burning heart in terror that the world is fucking falling apart right before his eyes.

 

The crack in the ground that’s revealed the hell underneath them leads back to a pair of Liam’s vans as Lux stands there behind everyone, looking right at Liam like he’s stunned too with his brows raised up into his hairline before the corners of his lips curl a little.

 

He’s not floating at all. The crash of thunder that’s still echoing around in a rumble was from his full weight slamming down to the ground, which crumbles underneath him and it reminds Liam that Lux really _wasn’t_ walking anywhere on Earth.

 

When he stops floating, it’s like the gravity of everything is sitting in him. His weight alone surely would’ve been leaving craters everywhere he went if he really touched the ground. Like how he’s doing right now.

 

“Calling me a God and a _faex nigre_ in the same sentence? I didn’t know that was my name.”

 

Okay so Lux has been standing there the entire time. Which means he heard Luke’s death wish and he didn’t even attack him for it.

 

Lux isn't a brick wall. His feelings can be hurt just like Liam's can. The fact that he heard Luke say all that about him and didn't attack until he threatened to touch Liam… well, it's not even a _hair_ short of what he'd expect from Zayn.

 

Lux turns his gaze to Luke as he smiles sweetly, kicking another tremor into the ground towards Luke that ripples through the concrete in a shockwaves, as if a massive mole is crawling beneath the rock. It effectively topples the giant over the widening crack everyone is running away from.

 

Lux nods towards Remy as he glides over to Luke.

 

“Get him back.” He gestures to Liam with his thumb behind him.

 

Remy snatches Liam off the rail in response right before the whole _wall_ falls into the ground. Remy hides them a ways away behind a boulder in the grass with him, far enough to be safe from the destruction of everything but close enough to see everything.

 

Liam is still discombobulated as everything is spinning around them from the storm picking up, going from mildly windy to a hurricane approaching nearby, ripping trees and demons off the ground, into the air.

 

“What’s happeni--”

 

Remy shushes Liam as he covers his mouth with his one of wings before he can finish. He peeks over the rock and keeps them both covered with his other wing like a sheath safely as a massive tornado of hellfire whips through the park.

 

It’s tearing up ramps and rails and _demons trying to escape the monstrosity,_ destroying everything in it’s wake and tearing the ground apart more, bringing _everything_ up with the strong wind, adding to the tornado’s size. Liam watches safely behind the rock with Remy as everyone runs or flies away. Except for Luke. Cause right now, he belongs to _Lux._

 

 _“A warm up to an outburst.”_ Remy finally answers Liam with a wide smile.

 

Lux pins Luke to the ground with his knee in his chest, slamming both his hands into the ground on either side of his face, sitting in the pocket where the storm moves around them. His hands melt right through the pavement, tearing open more holes full of lava into the ground.

 

“What a bloody _show off.”_ Remy tuts with a snort.

 

 _“Jesus_ he is hot.” Liam mutters, fanning his shirt as he tries to cool off just a tad. Remy looks over at him with a sly smirk.

 

“You literally have _no idea_ . He’s not even _trying_ right now. He’s always trying to impress someone.” Remy snorts.

 

“A few months ago, he burned a hole from Lust all the way to _Greed_ just to prove to Xhane he could. Three levels is the furthest he ever got through. I think his brother holds the record for 4 or 5 up from Wrath all the way to his house in Lust like 400 something years ago. Lux tried to do the same thing. It was AWESOME! Abraxas _hates_ their family. Their always tearing up the underworld and leaving him to deal with it.” He laughs.

 

“Really?” Liam smiles.

 

So, 400 years ago, Ira burned a tunnel from Wrath to their house and _Abraxas_ had to go clean up his mess. Sounds like a pretty obvious connection to the necromancy crisis to Liam _._ Necromancy is simply control of the dead through witchcraft. He needs to find out if demons can do black magic.

 

“I mean, Lux got _arrested_ but still. He’s the hottest demon in Lust. Never been anyone here that could control _Lust_ itself like that. He could light this entire level up if he wanted… but everyone would be destroyed so, y’know… he says he can't so he won’t get sent to Cocytus… even though I know he _can_ . His sister Morosa used to take us above the clouds and she’d let Lux go as hot as he wanted. It was _amazing_. But Acedia doesn’t like him doing it cause he can get in a lot of trouble. Abraxas told Acedia if Lux ever did anything like that again like he did a few months ago, he’s throwing him in Cocytus and tossing out the key. When we were younger before Lux knew how to do anything, he used to make the tower collapse whenever he walked by it for no reason at all and pretend like he didn’t know any better. He’s pretty much been on Abraxas’ hit list ever since then.”

 

Liam laughs really hard at that with the mental image of Lux burning down the King of Demon’s house. Lux is worse that Zayn and Mikey combined. He can see why everyone fears for their safety now if this fucking tsunami of hellfire in the air and lava on the ground is just a _warm up._ When they say “outburst” they don’t mean a temper tantrum or bullying.

 

Everything around Lux literally bursts into flames. Lust is his domain. Challenging him to any kind of fight here sounds like suicide.

 

 _“This_ is why he’s monitored?” Liam laughs. They made it sound like Lux was a murderer. Remy nods.

 

“Of course… Lux always stresses Abraxas out, he could barely keep his eyes on as it is cause Lux always used to sneak around and make himself look like someone else. Me and Damon had a bet that he’d burn the entire level down into Gluttony one day so there’s only 8 levels with one really hot, Lust-Gluttony fused SUPER-LEVEL. Everyone knows he can go _supernova_ . That’s why he was classed as “high-risk” and dangerous around others. Explosive demons are the _worse_ . Lust is like the best power you can get. He’s the first lilith that’s ever proved that _Lust_ is stronger than _Wrath_. He is THEE deadliest in Lust.” Remy grins.

 

“I _bet_ he is.” Liam murmurs quiety. “He sounds like quite the little bad-ass.”

 

He thinks he can see Lux laughing and he knows it’s because he can hear him, which makes Liam laugh too with flaming cheeks.

 

“I can’t believe you talked to LUKE like that! Nephilim are kind of like royalty but Luke’s the rut of his family so he always hangs out here. He’s not used to getting his ass handed to him by anyone other than Luxie.”

 

Liam read about those. Nephilim are _giants_ . Also known as the sons of fallen angels and Gods. So now he is 100% certain that Abraxas is _definitely_ the demon God. Cause he had to have come from the heavens to have landed in hell and had nephilim children.

 

Luke has long since shrunk back to normal size as he sinks into the melting ground, screaming in anguish from the burns as he writhes around in it while Lux leans down in his face after he sits on him, crushing him under his weight.

 

 _“Relax_ babe,” He smiles when Luke tries to move.

 

 _“P-please don’t. PLEASE!”_ Luke is crying and begging now and Liam doesn’t even feel that sorry for him. That’s what he wanted right? So Lux is giving it to him.

 

 _“Do you want Xhane… or me?”_ He whispers over Luke's lips, one inch of space between them as his hands sink deeper into the ground.

 

Luke winces, unable to move with Lux on top of him.

 

_“I can’t hear you.”_

 

“Luxie please,” Tears fall down Luke’s face in bulk as he closes his eyes.

 

 _“I’m not a mind reader._ **_Use your words.”_ **

 

“Xhane.” Luke blurts, seemingly unable to hold it in as he gasps and sobs hysterically. “I want her,”

 

Liam’s mouth hangs open.

 

“Xhane is a _girl?”_ He whispers. Remy nods.

 

“Xiomara Sequoia. The most powerful witch in the underworld. Hecate is gonna give her all her inheritance when she turns 21 so, she'll officially be a Goddess in a few years after she gives up her kakos. I personally think she's doing it hoping Lux will come back and, you know be together finally. She _loves_ her dad’s side. She wasn't interested in her mother or her nan’s powers at all before Adonis happened.”

 

Liam frowns as his heart pangs really hard. That was actually… really sad. Cause Lux is _never_ coming back and none of his friends have a clue.

 

So… her name can be said like “Shane” or like “Zane”. X’s can sound like an S or Z. The way Remy says it is with a Z prefix. But Lux uses an S. So it sounds like “she”. Maybe so Liam wouldn’t be confused when he said they were going to see his friend “Zane”.

 

Liam shakes his head at himself briefly. He literally said _she_ and Liam somehow didn’t catch it. Probably blocked it out. He doesn’t know _why._

 

Whatever. Why should he care if Xhane is a girl or a boy or a God or flying dog for all he knows. But he does feel really bad for her. Obviously she loves Lux _a lot_ to be willing to give up her demon self to be someone else who'd have a chance with Lux. _Anddd_ now…. he’s way too invested in these guy's personal lives.

 

He continues to watch Lux casually melting the ground under his weight, letting Luke drown in it, deciding to forget everything he just learned about all his friends because he's got enough with his own life he's dealing with.

 

It’s like Lux isn’t just inflicting physical pain on him, but also _emotional_ as he’s coaxing his angst he clearly feels for Xhane to the surface and getting off on it when it comes into him and Liam is reminded of his twin sisters name.

 

Pleasure in the misfortune of others.

 

An evil joy an incubus is known for, gaining strength in the demise of whoever they’re crushing beneath them, cutting off life to their brain as they dip into erotic asphyxiation, pleasure so divine it feels like you’re dying for it.

 

_“Too bad that’s not my name, huh? I’m sure you heard her screaming it though didn’t you? It wasn’t faexnigre.”_

 

Luke’s eyes spring open as he goes limp, his cries cut off sharply.

 

**_“Do you know who I am now?”_ **

 

“Lux, you _shit!”_

 

Ari’s shout comes at the perfect moment.

 

Remy and Liam both laugh at Lux’s irritated groan as his head drops, breaking his luxurious performance so Luke finally breathes again.

 

Ari runs over from the corner where the storm hasn’t touched yet, stopping as he leans against the wall to bend over on his knees and panting in exhaustion. Lux looks over at him.

 

“Fucking _ditched_ me,” Ari wheezes, shaking out the feathers on his neck.

 

When Lux’s focus gets broken, the storm stills a little as he looks over at Ari across the way. Ari points his thumb behind him as he gasps something unintelligible. Lux squints.

 

“Come again?”

 

 _“I dropped all my shit!”_ He repeats.

 

As they argue, Damon whips Remy around from behind and shoves his flying skateboard into his chest before beginning to rush away.

 

“Give this back to Xhane for me and tell ‘er I said thanks for letting me borrow it!” He tosses behind him as he flees the scene. Remy waves at him as he goes, holding onto Xhane’s winged skateboard. Liam looks back at Ari and Lux again.

 

_“Fucking CUSTODIA are right behind me asshole! We have to go up there NOW!”_

 

 _“Who’s custodia?”_ Liam whispers since Remy gasps when Ari says that, retracting his wings and standing up. He looks down at Liam.

 

_“Custody! As in the POLICE!”_

 

_“Why?!?”_

 

_“Obviously they got caught trying to shoot up aether, which is fucking illegal. And Lux is tearing holes into Lust right now, that’s even more ILLEGAL. We have to get the fuck out of here, they’ll take anyone they see!”_

 

Remy jumps on the rock with one leg, kicking himself off high into the air as his wings thrust him up higher so he flies away like how everyone else that managed to survive the shitstorm has done. When Lux shook the ground, everyone fled as fast as they could. If Liam was smart, maybe he would’ve too.

 

Liam doesn’t move an inch.

 

“Why did you come back HERE? I said GO AROUND _I’m fucking busy.”_ Lux shakes his head at Ari, irritated.

 

_“You're showing OFF for your damn boyfriend is what you're fucking doing--”_

 

 _“Will you just FUCK OFF!?”_ Lux cuts him off. Ari rolls his eyes.

 

“I’ll meet you at the clearing HURRY THE FUCK UP or I’m LEAVING YOU. I’m _starving_!” Ari goes back towards the corner.

 

Luke kicks Lux off him as he’s distracted, trying to fling his seared body out of the molten ground to escape but Lux steps on his chest as he hovers above him so it looks like he’s standing over him now.

 

“Have fun getting out of _Gluttony,_ little snitch. Tell my dumb brother _I_ sent you. If you come back here bothering me again, your last destination will be in the _grave_ so you be smart and turn the other fucking way the next time you feel like chatting shit with that toilet on your face _. Because I have nothing to lose but my temperament and I will eviscerate you with pleasure.”_

 

His foot pushes down on Luke’s chest, submerging him into the molten ground until he disappears below it’s surface, kicking and screaming as his voice is swallowed completely.

 

All at once, everything drops with the cacophony of 10,000 car accidents happening all at the the same time. Liam covers his ears from how loud the crash is, tripping over his legs as he falls on the trembling ground, right into the water that sizzles against his skin. His eyes follow the trail of it, flowing into a river the disappears into the dark woods, echoing howls of fire in the distance.

 

All the ramps are back on the ground once the wind calms and the melted ground cools with cracks lying open and everything goes back to normal Lust weather.

 

The park has been thoroughly destroyed as Lux followed through with lighting the place up but everything is calm again. A total wreck, but calm nonetheless.

 

3 guards tackle Ari to the ground as he’s the only one who hasn’t fled the scene aside from Lux and Liam.

 

 _“Fuck,”_ Lux mutters as he back away slowly, looking around the vacant park.

 

“LIMA!” He yells, searching for him frantically.

 

Liam gets up off the ground, revealing himself behind the rock and Lux sprints towards him on his feet again. But he’s not really on his feet if Liam pays attention closely.

 

“RUN!” He shouts as he laughs, flying by and hoisting himself over the rock, right between his legs as he jumps over it like a game of leapfrog, cutting into the woods, following along the stream.

 

Liam looks back at Ari managing to break free from getting arrested, disappearing around the corner as he runs in the opposite direction to them and Liam knows that this isn’t the first time Lux and Ari have done this. Separating is smart. They have planned escape routes.

 

“OI! STOP!” The guards split up, one going for Ari who ran away, the other two coming for Liam and Lux.

 

[ Dizzy - Monster Rally ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk-WB6_3IJQ)

 

Everything suddenly starts moving in fast forward mode instead of slow motion.

 

“ _Shit,”_ Liam trips as he takes off after Lux, zig-zagging around flaming trees and flying over rocks like track hurdles after pushing over them with one hand, one after another, following the water with Lux as they run through the woods.

 

He’s faster than him but he stays behind instead of running past cause he doesn’t know where the fuck this stream is going. He almost wants to laugh when he looks behind him to see they’re light years ahead of being caught cause they’re the fastest demons in Lust and no one can touch them if they tried.

 

He almost feels like a normal teenager again. The fun kind who make memories causing trouble and running from the law. Until Lux stops in front of him.

 

He bends on his knees to gag as he swears. He dry heaves rough smoke, choking on his own flame.

 

Liam skids to a stop as well, looking back worriedly when he feels Lux’s heart stuttering all over the place unstably. He _still_ didn’t get a chance to sate himself today so he’s on the brink of starving to death. Well… not to death. Starving until his pit takes over and turns him into a full blown demon and _makes_ him feed it _something_ to ensure his survival.

 

 _“Lux,”_ Liam tries to crouch in front of him but Lux pushes him off weakly, collapsing on his back as he floats above the ground, breath dragging out in exhaustion

 

 _“Just… go ahead,”_ he pants.

 

 _“Keep going…._ Straight… _along the… water. Until you reach a… clearing. Ari will be there, he’ll… he’ll take you back… home. Big black wings on his back. Really can’t miss him.”_

 

“What?!?”

 

 _“I fucked it up. We’re… aborting… the mission.”_ Lux shakes his head tiredly. _“Cops are gonna be at my house. Trust me… it’ll be better if I get caught alone. No one will know you left the house.”_

 

“I think the 100 witnesses that just saw me know I left the house.”

 

 _“No one’s gonna snitch babe, they’re all afraid of me. Just go.”_ He waves his hand lazily before moving it under his shirt to scratch around his belly piercing.

 

Liam looks around the woods briefly, listening closely to the running coming towards them.

 

“Liam--”

 

“You’ve got a lot of enemies. Everyone is gonna know who I am and that I was there with you.” Liam cuts him off as he pulls Lux backup.

 

“ _What are you doing?! You have to go_ \--” Liam covers his mouth.

 

“There’s no way I’m leaving you here, alone, to get _arrested_ and thrown into Cocytus.”

 

Lux pulls his hand off and looks around the woods, hearing the cops running around looking for them.

 

“I’m still going to Xhane’s house. She’s got cool tricks up her sleeves. I’m not getting arrested.” He says absently.

 

“Why didn’t you tell me Xhane was a girl?” Liam questions him like he’s accusing him of something he hasn’t even done. Lux laughs short as he looks at him again.

 

“Cause if you’d actually listen for once, you’d know I _did_ . But you’re so _pretty_ when you’re jealous, I didn’t want to spoil it _wittle baby._ ” He coos, pinching Liam’s cheek and moving it back and forth with a squishy face like he’s an actual baby, which Liam slaps away with a heated glare as his face steams.

 

He supposes it doesn’t really matter if Xhane was a girl or not. Gender means nothing to Lux and he’s not the relationship type. He’s the fuck his friends casually and break the law together type. Like how Zayn was.  

 

Obviously he sleeps/slept with her so it’s still gonna be _awkward_ especially now that he knows more intimate details about the fact that they were/are in a really fucked up love triangle and that’s probably why Luke started hating Lux in the first place. Or love square. Or pentagon if you wanna toss Narcissus into the mix for Adonis. Is Liam involved? We’ll just throw in the whole universe. There’s a lot of sluts in this group.  

 

 _“Go.”_ Lux laughs as he pushes Liam’s arms back, urging him to run straight ahead as he nods behind Liam.

 

“Dude, I do this all the time. They’re not gonna send me to Cocytus, I promise.”

 

“I’m coming with you.” Liam holds his hands. “Xhane has to fix my clairvoyance, right? I don’t wanna abort the mission.”

 

Liam is honestly having a lot of fun despite the craziness of this trip. He thought he was gonna die when he stepped on the skateboard but now that’s he’s on the edges of it all, he doesn’t wanna turn back now.

 

Lux bends forward a little as he laughs, shaking his head.

 

“You really want my brother to _kill_ me.”

 

“No, I _don’t._ And I don’t want Zayn to either.” Liam says seriously. Lux’s face draws a blank as his smile falls off his face, staring at Liam straight in the eye without a blink.

 

After a beat, he blinks once, shaking his head a little.

 

_“...wha…”_

 

“I--” Liam closes his eyes, mustering some fortitude as he squeezes his hands between them.

 

_“I don’t want you to die.”_

 

This is probably the wrong time to be trying to discuss this right now but the adrenaline is off the charts and he knows if he puts it off, they’ll never talk about it.

 

Liam opens his eyes again, and Lux’s are glazed over completely, so clouded it looks like he has cataracts - how eyes look when a camera has flashed in them in photos.

 

Liam can’t see through his eyes at all, not even to see himself. He looks like a statue and he doesn’t know what that means or what to do so he keeps talking cause that’s all he knows what to do with Lux when he doesn’t say anything.

 

“You… you don’t have to _sacrifice_ your life for me, that isn’t right! I know how to project parts of myself out of my body. I can… I can _guide you_ and then you can live separate from Zayn like before and everything will be so much _easier_ for both of you without the mirror or through the water in the marsh _._ Neither of you have to die for me to live! Even if I have to ditch my fucked up body or something, I’d rather do that then take my body over your _life_. I mean, I dunno if that’s even possible, but I’m not letting you _do_ that to yourself. I don’t want you to turn into _nothing._ You _exist_ and you’re _real_ and you’re so _fucking_ young, I hate thinking about you giving up everything you had. All your friends, and brothers and sisters and your _nieces_ … they care about you too! And I know we haven’t been friends for that long but I care about you and _I’m_ gonna miss you _._ Even if I don’t remember you, I’d still miss you cause I’d know something was missing that’s not supposed to and I’d never be able to figure out what it is. You had an entire life before me and you can’t just throw that all away. I want to _remember_ you and your name because you’re a part of me now and I want you to remember me too because I--”

 

_Don’t say it._

 

“I…”

 

Liam’s heart clenches, feeling like he’s gonna implode.

 

_“I love you too.”_

 

Okay. He fucking said it. He just blurted everything at once and he can’t suck any of the words back in.

 

Lux doesn’t blink. He’s frozen solid and Liam is almost afraid his little speech has sent him into a catatonic stupor.

 

He finally blinks the clouds out of his eyes that Liam realises were tears, which is so strange to see because he didn’t even know Lux’s eyes could have tears.

 

His don’t fall down his face like normal tears. They cloud over his eyes and makes them look opaque until he blinks them away, wetting his thick eyelashes up as his eyes come back to responsive life again. They’re full of emotion Liam _isn’t_ feeling right now, his mouth slightly agape.

 

Alarm and _fear_. Like Liam just declared his love for Satan.

 

 ** _“LUXURIA!”_** Demonic _angry_ , polyphonic voices cuts through the trees.

 

Lux’s face stays stunned as he drops his hand, still holding Liam’s before running with him.

  
  
_“Come on,”_ He murmurs as he pulls Liam behind him and they’re both off deeper into the woods in a dazed haze.


	11. Demons : Nars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam learns that Zayn and Lux are keeping dark secrets from him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Liam hasn’t had a lot of issues with self control in the past.  

 

Sure, his brain was a tricky piece of work. But before all this happened, he could control himself. Even when he was hallucinating, it never made him act crazy.

His thoughts, emotions and impulses could be chased away, cast out completely and brought back with ease. But an infinite rush of burning scenery can leave anyone’s thoughts a bit scattered. And apparently, Lux can make him act _crazy._

 

As Lux pulls Liam along through these strange woods, Liam’s thoughts are all raging with his emotion after his impulsive speech has sprung them all off his tongue and into live action, suddenly alive in him like Zayn’s, jumping around in the boxing ring that is his body and having a fight to the death.

 

His thoughts are screaming and swinging aimlessly at him for being an idiot. His emotion is bleeding out, exposing him too much and baring more than he’d like. His heart isn’t looking too good right now either. The ref took off without calling who won. The entire crowd in the stands are all fighting as well.

 

He doesn’t know where they’re going because everything inside him is on fire and everything around him is on fire and everything is on _fire_ because he’s in hell and he just dropped a large bomb on Lux and set him on fire too, their burning fingers still interlocked as they go.

 

_Did that really just happen?_

 

Maybe it didn’t. Maybe he’s in the middle of a very intricately detailed hallucination and he never actually left the house at all. Nothing was impossible.

 

The stream from the marsh keeps a path they follow as the fire in the trees light the way. The cold water cools it all down. But Liam can’t feel his feet moving or his arm being pulled ahead of him.

 

They run until they get to a dead end where more guards are blocking the path of the stream.

 

Lux stops all of the sudden, making Liam fall into his back dopily, backing up again and ducking them behind a boulder before they can be seen, Lux having to physically _force_ Liam to get down since he’s still stunned.

 

Lux is too. He hasn’t said more than two words to Liam.

 

Their backs plaster against the rock with glue, breathing quiet to listen to the thump of footsteps running past, just a hair louder than the thump of their jittery hearts.

 

Thankfully, no one saw them.

 

Liam looks over at Lux after a long pause of staring ahead. His eyes are squeezed closed, holding on tight to his stomach with a trembling hand like he might have a tummy ache… or like he’s gonna be sick. His face is so flushed. He looks like he’s trying not to cry.

 

Liam wants to ask him if he’s alright but… his mouth feels like he put everything into his words and drained them dry. So he only watches Lux holding his stomach with his pained expression for a while, squeezing _hard_ on his gut until he slowly opens his eyes, all grey and normal again. Very slowly, his bent legs turn him around to look over the boulder.

 

 _“Where are you Ari… ”_ He mumbles, shaking his head with his lip bitten in his mouth as he peeks over the rock before quickly ducking again when more footsteps come close.

 

 _“Fuck,”_ He chokes up as he covers his face with both hands, discreetly wiping his wet eyes as he folds over his quivering tummy with his knees bending into his chest and Liam sees he really _is_ crying and it’s an _awful_ sight. Liam doesn’t know what to do as he’s still stuck in his own startelement.

 

He cries like Zayn.

 

Zayn always holds back so his tears won’t flow too and he makes it look so physically painful to hold in. But Lux cowers into himself and squeezes his stomach like he’s trying to make it go away as he hides his face. Obviously he doesn’t have a lot of experience with crying because it’s not gonna go away no matter how much you squeeze your stomach, even if you rip it out. That feeling rocks through your body uncontrollably.

 

He never considered that maybe Lux doesn’t talk about what he’s doing for Liam because _he’s_ emotional about it too.

 

Also… unexpectedly blurting out that you love someone can be alarming and he feels like trying talk about everything again will only make it worse. He didn’t mean to make him _cry._ He’s not even sure if he heard him completely. He disappeared the moment Liam got out the first part.

 

It felt like the words just pushed out of him and slammed into Lux.

 

Literally knocking out his sight. Like before, when he knocked them over only it wasn’t a force of physical energy with his words this time. _All_ the power was stripped down to his words _alone_ and it’s left his mouth dry and no other words left inside and it’s nothing short of supernatural how fucked up his mouth feels now.

 

Since he can't do anything with his dry tongue, Liam quickly reaches down and splashes ice cold water on his face to wake himself up so he can get his bearings straight. It sizzles and steams into the air, making him gasps aloud as he finds sound again. Lux uncovers his splotchy red and wet face as he looks down at Liam in confusion, making him stop as he grabs him and slams him back into the rock angrily.

 

 _“What the hell are you doing?”_ He hisses quietly, redness beginning to swell under his eyes as he’s wiping off Liam’s face.

 

“ _Stop! The enemy will find us!”_

 

Liam blinks rapidly, holding Lux’s hands still as the words finally form properly again.

 

“Lux, I’m _so sorry! I_ … um,”

 

 _“Oh my God we don’t have time for this.”_ Lux springs to his feet before Liam can get a coherent sentence out, leaning over the rock to squint up past the treetops, cupping his mouth with both hands.

 

**“ARISTOTLE!”**

 

His concentrated voices shout through his hands and shoots straight up into the air, catching in the clouds.

 

Lux blinks down, holding on tight to his stomach still as he listens closely to the thunder he’s sent out into the sky. Liam can hear it too, moving through the air as if it’s on a wire into the distance. Lux looks down at Liam as he’s listening, holding his gaze with an _unreadable_ expression. He’s not smiling or frowning but it’s clear he’s not been able to push out the urge to cry as he’s biting down on his trembling lip.

 

In the distance, his thunderous voice catches onto something solid, like it’s bounced off a brick wall, before the sound gets thrown back at them like a boomerang as his voice comes back into him with louder thunder, physically knocking him upside the head like someone just threw a rock at him as he jerks back, falling off his balance.

 

Liam is instantly behind him, catching his back as a siren sounds through the trees that come along with his voice, full racks of thunder concentrated through a bullhorn in what seems like every direction.

 

The storm is talking to them.

 

 _“What is that?!?”_ Liam winces as he shouts over the deafening noise ringing around in their ears. Lux winces too, covering his ears with his eyes squeezed shut.

 

 _“Echolocation… it’s Ari!”_  He shouts over it, getting off Liam, pulling him up too.

 

_“He dispersed to the thunder so we can follow it! He’s almost at the clearing, we have to be there now!”_

 

That was kind of amazing that they can find each other through _thunder_ like that, wondering how the hell Ari is able to make it _this_ loud. Although he’d probably never use it, Liam would love to learn how to do that. Imagine losing something and you just send out a noise to locate it instantly?

 

If they ever got separated, they’d always be able to find each other through the storm.

 

Lux hops over the rock and Liam watches him disappearing down the stream towards a clearing with his heart overwrought in it’s beat as he follows him, catching up in only a few seconds.

 

 _“Lux wait, please.”_ Liam stops him, whipping his shoulder to face him before he can get any further away from him, looking him in the face.

 

 _“Did you hear everything I said before?”_ His voice is drowning in the thunder echoing all over the woods.

 

He was kind of hoping Lux would be all for the idea of maybe _not_ destroying his life. His face twists into anger now, as if Liam just turned him around and insulted his mum.

 

_“You STUPID little boy, you’ve put this stupid heart in my chest to volitāre!”_

 

Their voices sound so far away. Liam feels partially deaf right now. He doesn’t know what the hell a “ _volitare”_ is unless they’re talking about the famous French philosopher.

 

 _“I WHAT!?”_ Liam yells over the thunder.

 

 _“YOU COMPELLED ME!”_ Lux shrugs Liam’s hands off him, pushing his chest back to put space between them.

 

 _“Fucking hell, sometimes I wish I never even MET you!”_ He grumbles with his muffled sound as he paces with his hands over his face with his chest heaving rapidly.

 

 _“Just cut my goddamn loses and KILL both of you stupid humans so I can go on with my life.”_ He presses his forehead as he looks at the ground, their signature look of being completely stressed out.

 

 _“You don’t mean that.”_ Liam shakes his head sadly.

 

Maybe he does.

 

They’ve been getting along so well lately… well, not Lux and Zayn but whatever, the other combos have been good to go. But Liam has single-handedly ruined all of it just by simply expressing that he actually cares about Lux. Of course he doesn’t want to hear that. He hates humans and it’s Liam’s fault he’s dying in the first place. Maybe they can’t change their predicament and Liam shouldn’t talk about it at all anymore.

 

Lux laughs as his head pops back up.

 

_“Yeah, you’re right. I can’t do any of that because you have ruined me forever!”_

 

 _“Luxie…”_ Liam’s face breaks as he takes a small step forward again. _“Please just listen to me! I’m trying to tell you I don’t want you to die! You don’t have to--”_

 

 _“No fucking Luxie!_ _Stop telling me what to DO!”_ Lux pushes him away from him harder this time, clutching his stomach as he winces.

 

 _“Please… just, just st-stop DOING this to me!”_ He holds his stomach as a tear falls down his broken up face as it finally breaks over the edge.

 

“ _Lux what’s wrong? Please tell me what's wrong, I can help you!”_ Liam doesn’t touch him this time as he’s flinching away from him again.

 

 _“You can’t help ANYTHING!_ Just stop **TALKING!** _Fuck,_ **”** Lux yells _at_ him with his eyes closed as his voice breaks out of it’s caged sound like thunder exploding in Liam’s ears, emphasising his words.

 

He’s obviously in pain right now but his stomach isn’t growling so it’s not from hunger.

 

_“Stay. Back. Ari’s not good at landing.”_

 

Liam’s hands flop at his sides like they’ve suddenly broken.

 

He didn’t mean to _upset_ him this badly or at all. Or… compel him, whatever the hell that means.

 

Obviously Lux didn’t hear anything he said. He didn’t ask him to off himself. He’s trying to tell him _not_ to.

 

A powerful swoosh moves through the hot air that’s carrying a high-pitched whistle as the noise begins to die down. It’s sweeping Liam’s shaggy hair up as he covers his head and stumbles backs away from the _giant_ bird landing in front of them. Only it’s not a bird. It’s _Ari._

 

“Fuck you and your saggy balls, yeah? I land beautifully.” Ari flicks off Lux as he lands in the quiet forest now aside from the perpetual burning in the air and the infinitely spinning storm above the treetops.

 

He’s got mighty black wings, so _strong,_ on his back now _._ They appear soft and feathery instead of leather like Remy’s, but the tips are sharpened like deadly daggers, shining nice and crisp like the diamonds all over his skin and thick talons growing out of his feet as he’s kicked off his shoes and full blown claws that scrape the grass, crouching on all fours now.

 

Ari's teasing smirk quickly turns into a worried frown when he sees tears on Lux's distraught, reddened face.  
  
  
" _Hey_ , what's wrong?" He his voice softens as he stands up and reaches out for his arms but Lux slaps his hands away angrily.

 

“You _hit me,that's what's wrong!”_ Lux stomps at his shin, making Ari squawk with his wings flaring sporadically.

 

“OW!” He hops on one leg as he holds the one Lux just kicked in, eyes bulging at him like he’s insane.

 

"What’s the matter with you!? I didn't hit you _that_ hard. Is that… why you're _crying?"_

 

Ari looks between Lux and Liam in confusion and Liam knows he’s never seen Lux cry before. _  
_ _  
_ _  
_ _No_. Liam thinks. He was like this way before that. Actually… he was doing worse.

 

Lux turns away from them, groaning as he holds his stomach, leaning his fist against a tree, banging his knuckles against it once as he swears to himself while Ari turns to Liam.

 

"I swear I didn’t hit him that hard." He repeats.  
  
  
Liam gapes at his wings.

 

“You’re a… _harpy?”_ He gasps with wide eyes.

 

Ari shakes his head no as he puts his little fedora back on while Lux spits up black bile behind them.

 

"Luxuria, come _back_ here right now."  
  
  
_"I'm fine,"_ Lux waves Ari off as he looks back at them with green tinting his cheeks now. He looks _awful_ .  
  
  
"... just give me a _minut--"_ before he can even finish, he turns back around and up chucks mid-sentence, pulsing black mush spilling out of him.  
  
  
Ari gags, looking back at Liam again so as not to get sick himself.

 

 _“Lightning bird,_ babe. Not to be confused with thunderbird.” He tells Liam with a flashy show of his white fangs as his scales all flex in a wave moving down his face.

 

Of course, he’s got the soul of a _bird_.

 

According to Liam’s book about legendary, mythical creatures that really aren’t so mythical afterall, lightning birds are blood sucking animals with wings and talons that summon thunder and lightning. Allies to witches, taking the form of a young man to seduce women.

 

But Ari isn’t an animal and is obviously from Lust and eats _aether…_ not blood. Witches are seriously unreliable sources.

 

He looks pretty badass with his wings out.

 

“What’s the difference?” Liam wonders out loud. Thunderbird and lightning bird sound like the same thing.

 

“Location. Lightning birds are African. Pretty sure harpies are extinct.” He shrugs casually.

 

Of course, that wasn’t in the book at all.

 

“Thunderbirds are our relatives from North America. My mum’s family came from South Africa and my dad’s from Ghana. That’s about the only difference. I think they moved here like… 2 or 3 centuries ago after slavery or whatever started on the surface right after it ended in the underworld.”

 

“There was… _slavery_ in the underworld?” Liam repeats in shock, Ari nods.

 

“Still is. Slavery is a very broad term. But the lightning bird conflicts specifically had it pretty bad for a few thousand years until we settled in Lust. I’ve got all kinds of weird relatives on both sides on the surface. My sisters all came out with the feathers of a phoenix. Who _knows_ how far back the line goes. Birds fuck like bunnies.”

 

Liam snorts as they get into a brief chat, if only not to stare at Lux throwing up in the woods, about Ari’s bird heritage on his mother’s side on Earth and demon heritage on his dad’s in hell that makes him an and all 5 of his sisters _avifauna incubi and succubi._ Demons really _do_ live on the surface and Liam doesn’t even find it that bizarre anymore. Just because they’re descended from the underworld doesn’t mean they’re all evil.

 

Liam thinks Harry will get a kick out of that. He’d _love_ talking to Ari about the history his species.

 

Then they’ve got Xhane, granddaughter of the _Goddess_ Hecate and succubus witch. Liam’s kind of nervous about meeting _her._

 

Of course Liam doesn’t forget Lux, who is really angry at Liam right now and probably wishes they _never_ crossed paths.

 

Little trio of peculiar liliths.

 

Lux walks off to be sick without them staring at him. When he’s far away, Ari looks back at Liam with his voice low.

 

 _“What the heck happened to him?”_ He whispers.

 

Liam bites his lip as he watches Lux throwing up, swearing to himself as he wipes his face, coughing on the sobs he spits out now. Liam can hear him hiccuping on it.

 

“I dunno, we were just _talking_ and his eyes went all white and _stunned_ like a statue but he woke back up all freaked out!”

 

Ari’s face drops as he looks at Lux.

 

 _“Oh my god…”_ He murmurs, then looks at Liam quickly.

 

_“What did you say to him?!”_

 

Liam can’t tell Ari Lux is dying and _that’s_ why he’s crying since Lux obviously doesn’t want his friends to know. But he doesn’t want to lie either because Liam has done something that’s making Lux really sick and he needs Ari to help him.

 

“He’s… sacrificing something for me and I told him I don’t want him to because he needs it more than me and I don’t want to take it away from him.” He follows Lux’s lead and keeps it vague. But it’s as if Ari can read right between the lines anyways as Liam sees his deep brown eyes turning _black_ with his jaw hardening as he watches Lux.

 

 _“That little_ _asshole_.”

 

Of course Ari already knows. Lux definitely tells him things he doesn’t tell his other friends. He wasn’t so great at acting as surprised to see Lux as the others were.

 

Liam figures that’s why Lux made him trip into Ari. Yeah, he finally _noticed_ something for once.

 

He’s been working on his eternal absent-mindedness and trying really hard to pay more attention to detail so he isn’t so oblivious to important things anymore. But he still can’t pay attention enough to watch what he fucking says to Lux and not be so attacking. He _hates_ seeing Lux like this.

 

His absent-mindedness is most likely because of his dissociative amnesia. Even if he now knows that’s actually projection, it still fucks up his memory and awareness of conscious perception, completely out of his control and no matter how hard he tries, he still finds it so _hard_ to focus on noticing obvious things.

 

Harry and Zayn always joked about it but, being the most oblivious boy in the world isn’t really a funny joke anymore. It has already cost so many lives, nearly including his own. His mind being so inattentive has almost been like a handicap to Liam in this situation and it’s definitely got worse ever since they tried to have sex. But he’s still trying.

 

He noticed how Lux flung himself on him as fast as he could when he got down the hill, _covering_ Liam with his strong aroma that’s still all over him right now because he smells like Lux. He most likely told Ari about Liam a while ago so he knew he wouldn’t be put off with his smell when they collided. Cause if Liam had have fallen into anyone else… he’d be dead. But Ari already knew who Liam was. He’d just never seen him before.

 

“Did I do something wrong?” Liam asks desperately before he just goes on and starts towards Lux.

 

“I have to apologise--”

 

 _“No, don’t.”_ Ari holds his wing out, blocking Liam from going after Lux as Liam holds onto it with a worried frown.

 

“You didn’t do _anything_ wrong. You _helped him.”_

 

Liam looks at Ari now.

 

“How? He’s _angry_ at me for setting his heart… in voltaire or something...”

 

Ari’s brows shoot up into a smile briefly as he bends forward and laughs, looking back at Lux again.

 

 _“Oh my God,”_ He snorts, shaking his head. “I think he meant _volitation.”_

 

“Like… flying?” Liam’s brows knit. Ari nods as he holds his abdomen with a wide smile.

 

“Luxie’s never had a body, Liam. He’s never felt a heart flutter before like us.” Ari explains as he gestures to his heart, beating on his chest with his fist but Liam shakes his head slowly, not understanding what he’s saying.

 

“Liam…. he’s living vicariously through your _Zaynie_ . He _likes_ you. _More than likes you.”_ Ari smiles and his use of ‘Zaynie’ like that is really… _creepy_.

 

He gets that Lux tells him a lot but knowing personal stuff involving his relationship with Zayn, even with things like pet-names and other intimate details… there’s some stuff he probably knows about in detail that Liam doesn’t think he’d even share with _Harry_ and that’s _really_ awkward. He’s still a total stranger to both of them.

 

“He can’t handle the flutters in his gut you make him feel. That’s probably why he’s freaking the fuck out. Flight or fight mode, ch’know.”

 

Liam nods now as he blushes a little in understanding. He told Lux he loved him and his heart started _flying._ But Lux clearly does not like that feeling. Liam doesn’t think he would either if he hadn’t felt it his entire life.

 

Being born without a body honestly sounds like the  _shit_ to Liam. None of the extra crap he has to deal with now.

 

Puberty. Breaking bones. Getting sick. Crying until his heart is bleeding and his head is pounding. Astral projection. Disappearing into mirrors… you know. All the normal bullshit. But… he does get to feel every part of Zayn so all that extra stuff is suddenly worth it.

 

Lux hasn’t been in Zayn for that long as it is so discovering the horror and wonder of flutters in your body when someone you like actually tells you that they love you. Everyday, he finds more new, confusing things and feeling hiding in Zayn’s body. If all that was suddenly sprang on Liam one day after a lifetime of being at peace without a body, Liam would be losing his shit too.

 

But he doesn’t think that’s what’s happening to Lux.

 

Sure he feels what Zayn feels but… those aren’t _his_ feelings and Liam telling him he reciprocates something Lux doesn’t, especially coming from a _human…_ Liam won’t take it personally that it’s making him sick.

 

Okay, maybe it does hurt just a little.

 

He should’ve deduced for himself that expressions of love of any kind, even the platonic kind, from anything that isn’t a God turns Lux off completely if they’re not just having sex.

 

“Ari… he said I _compelled_ him. I think he meant I mucked up his _volition,_ not volitation. As in free-will _?”_

 

“You didn’t compel him Liam, you broke whoever compelled him to do the opposite of whatever you said to him.” Ari looks back at him seriously.

 

“When Luxie’s eyes go stone-blind it’s because someone has already compelled him before hand. The stronger the compulsion is, the more he’ll be stunned. You didn’t break it _completely_ but you chipped through some of it. That’s like…. _really_ hard to do. Lux is almost _impossible_ to compel for most demons cause he’s the most uncontrollable prick in hell. He usually evades everyone else’s desire. And you weren’t even _trying_. You make a really deadly demon.” Ari murmurs as he looks at Liam with an impresses nod.

 

Liam doesn’t want to _control_ Lux. That’s _awful_ to force your will on someone _._

 

“How does he break it?”

 

“That’s the issue. _He_ can’t break it. Someone has to overpower it for him. Compulsion is really strong… it’s hard to break once you’ve been compelled to do something. Luxie’s brother is over 1,000 years old and even _he’s_ not skilled enough to compel Lux, let alone overpower it. If someone tells him to bend over backwards and you come along and manage to _make_ him bend forward, you’ve _broken_ the drive that’s bending him back. But… if you don’t know what you’re doing, you could end up breaking his back. Compulsion is kind of like that. You didn’t necessarily break his back, you’ve just stunned him… and apparently sent his heart into _volitāre, how cute.”_ Ari snorts.

 

“So that means… someone compelled him to--”

 

_….die?_

 

Liam doesn’t finish the sentence as Ari waits for him to ask another question. Maybe he should.

 

Before either of them can say anything else, Lux marches back over to them and rips Ari’s wing off Liam, still queasy in the face.

 

“Why don’t you act like you’ve got a fucking girlfriend and _you_ act like you've got a boyfriend and keep your hands to your _selves.”_ he warns Liam, gesturing to Ari.

 

“You're my girlfriend now Luxie? I’m _flattered_.” Ari turns to Liam.

 

“He never wanted it to be official, can you believe all I had to do was flirt with you?”

 

Liam stops himself from laughing at Ari’s joke when Lux sends him serious daggers. Ari gets serious too, taking his hat off and giving it to Lux.

 

“We need to talk. _Now.”_

 

Lux rolls his eyes as he snatches his hat when Ari gives it to him and shoves it in Liam’s chest roughly.

 

“Go fill this with water.” He barks, evidently addressing _Liam_ even though his eyes are on Ari, nodding towards the stream far away from them. Liam only squints in confusion, looking down at the hat.

 

“Why?”

 

Lux looks at him then

 

“When I tell you to do something… _just do it?”_

 

“Okay,” Liam frowns turning away.

 

“And no _fucking_ puppy eyes!”

 

Lux yells behind him as he walks back over to the stream running by, looking back at Ari punching Lux in the shoulder, talking to him sharply in words Liam doesn’t understand.

 

God, they are so demonic and _hot_ when they’re pissed off. Liam can feel Lux’s distinctive heat all the way from where he’s standing.  

 

His ability to be an insufferable asshole in only a few minutes is astounding.

 

As he dips Ari’s hat into the marsh waters, he listens to their conversation, unable to follow along with everything they’re talking about without proper context.

 

 _“I already told you why!”_ Lux hisses at him. _“He bit him.”_

 

 _“Stop LYING to me!”_ Ari yells back, _furious. “You failed to mention that he’s MAKING YOU kill yourself. This isn’t YOUR choice. And it’s ESPECIALLY stupid when you don’t know if that will really work. Are you forgetting my dad is a goddamn pigment harvester? He literally works with synthetic aether and kakos in sick demons. I have never in my fucking life heard of this bullshit he’s feeding you about someone else’s kakos disappearing after they’ve shared it with someone. This is the dumbest shit I’ve ever fucking heard come out of your mouth and you know why? Because they AREN’T your words. And I know you’re fucking lying because you hid the fact that he COMPELLED YOU to do it.”_

 

_“No one is making me do anything.”_

 

_“Is that really all you’re gonna say? Because you are so full of shit Lux. Liam just told me he stunned you.”_

 

_“I’m not explaining myself to you. He didn’t stun me. You WON’T understand.”_

 

Liam keeps his back turned but he knows Lux is lying through his teeth.

 

 _“That’s what I’m TRYING to do Luxie… you’ve_ changed A LOT _and it’s not because you’ve got a body now. You’re being reckless and acting fucking stupid. I know something is wrong. Since when do I not understand you? Shit, since when we keep SECRETS? You don’t have to hide anything from me, just tell me what’s going on! Are you in some kind of trouble?”_

 

Lux doesn’t say anything.

 

_“Is that why you were bringing him to Xhane? So she could fix him instead? My dad can have a look at him, there’s many ways to replace kakos with aether--”_

 

_“Ari… please, I can’t--”_

 

 _“Luxuria seriously, there’s_ no one else here. _No Abraxas. No Acedia. You don’t even have to speak in fucking iambic pentameter. You have to tell_ me _what’s going on NOW. I’m not gonna compel you.”_

 

Lux still doesn’t say anything.

 

 _“Oh is it, then? You really gonna make me beg you? Because I’m_ never _forcing words out.”_

 

_“I dunno what you expect me to say when I already told you--”_

 

_“I expect you to tell me the truth. I’m trying to understand your stupid logic… if this is YOUR logic because this doesn’t sound like YOU talking. Why are you doing this for him? He fucking hates you, why would you help him?”_

 

_“I’m not helping HIM!”_

 

_“Okay well if you won’t talk to me then maybe you’ll talk to Morosa--”_

 

 _“No Ari, please you can’t tell her I’m here! Just… fuck, we can’t go home yet!”_ Lux panics.

 

_“Right. Because if she knew he compelled you or HALF of any of the bull you told me, she’d be back here within the HOUR and ripping Ace apart and sending you back to the surface far away from here!”_

 

_“We can’t GO BACK to the surface!”_

 

_“Why? That’s all you’ve ever wanted to do. What’s on the surface that’s got you so spooked?”_

 

_Long pause._

 

 _“Okay, so I’m gonna go on and assume that this doesn’t sound like you because it ISN’T you and you are_ scaring _me because it looks like to me you’re trying to say someone is trying to kill YOU here AND on the surface and take his fucking body when it’s clean! Just like… blink 2 times if this isn’t YOU talking.”_

 

Liam gets wicked chills frosting down his spine as he listens to them, resisting the urge to turn around and see if Lux actually does it.

 

Zayn said that exact same thing about someone taking his body in hell. And here they are, running back to where they were before in their stupid _circles_ with no fucking context or real knowledge about what the fuck is going on. Zayn has nightmares from the past that don’t make sense and he needs to SAY what the fuck he actually sees in his memories. He didn’t say anything about his own body being taken. He was talking about _Liam’s_ body. He didn’t just make that up out of nowhere. But now it sounds like Ari is saying the same thing about someone taking _Zayn’s body._

 

Who the fuck would be trying to take his body? He can’t really tell if they’re talking about Zayn or Liam. Or… _both._

 

 _“I can’t DO EVERYTHING I want in this fucking body, okay!?”_ Lux blurts _“There’s something blocking my sight and some of the muscles in his brain and it’s affecting his too every time something gets triggered inside. They were up there being manipulated by fucking satanists every single day. I just need Xhane to fix our sight so I know what’s real and what isn’t because his brain is so FUCKED, nothing makes any sense! I can’t trust his thoughts and I can’t go home yet. Abraxas is gonna be there soon and I just need to get him to Xhane before any of that happens. He thinks they’re dreams but… they look like fucking hallucinations but he does so much fucking drugs, I can’t tell what is real in his memory. I don’t know why we can’t control all the muscles or think properly! No one compelled us. He didn’t stun me Ari. He’s been dreaming about this shit way before we got here but he locks me out so much I can’t fucking see everything I just need Xhane to open everything up in both of us so she can tell me what she sees, you can’t tell anyone!”_

 

 _“Okay, okay, I get you, calm down. Just tell me what you HAVE seen. Slowly. Iambic pentameter.”_ Ari shushes him gently when Liam looks back at them, seeing Lux yanking at Ari’s shirt collar in distress.

 

His eyes are _petrified_ again _._

 

Whatever stupor he was in all day Liam triggered in him has him completely fucked up inside now and unable to talk. Because he _did_ stun him. But Ari’s telling him to talk in iambic pentameter… which is really smart. Whatever words Lux can’t say on their own can be stressed and unstressed in sentences and strung together to make new sentences. Like a coded message.

 

Liam told him he doesn’t want him to die and he froze. If that’s _compulsion_ counteracting inside him _…._ Then that means someone compelled Lux by telling him they _want_ him to die. It’s easy to guess that’s Zayn. But Liam doesn’t think Zayn can compel _himself._ Someone else compelled him. The one Liam told him _always_ compels him.

 

Nars’ best friend who told him the “solution” to reversing a demon bite.

 

Killing the demon. But… that kills Zayn too.

 

Zayn would have to sacrifice his heart - the most important part of his body that Lux is keeping alive. But if he doesn’t feed soon, they won’t have to worry about any of that. And if Lux dies, Zayn’s heart will stop.

 

Even if his body completely deconstructs itself and reforms on the surface somewhere, his cursed body can’t be stolen from anyone. He’s _stuck_ in it. Even doing drugs can’t take him out of his body.

 

Liam’s body isn’t cursed or immortal or valuable at all so how could anyone benefit from stealing their bodies?

 

When they see Liam watching, they both stop speaking English. Liam quickly turns back around, even though it’s pointless. They know he’s eavesdropping and now they’re speaking in tongues.

 

 _Arguing_ again.

 

He goes back to collecting the water they obviously made him go get so he and Ari could talk without him nearby. He has no idea what’s going on or how compulsion actually works but… it’s apparent they are in danger in the house they live in now because of what Lux did at that park.

 

Even though Lux thinks Xhane can somehow fix everything somehow, Abraxas is definitely gonna be knocking at their door since he burned down the fucking park and sent the guys _son_ the Gluttony and Liam is _freaking out._

 

He needs to find some calm before this anxiety kills him from how sporadic his heart is becoming in it’s beat, in sync with Lux’s.

 

A few flower petals float around in the hat in the sparkling waters. There’s a small waterfall down the stream he’s been hearing the sound of rain coming from. It’s a fountain, with a scene of a few greek statues bathing in the river a little ways down, half-naked Goddesses dressed in lengthy gowns and surrounded by cherubs. It’s such an aesthetically pleasing view.

 

As he stares at it in awe, he thinks they might be a representation of nymphs but the engravement on the side says,

 

_“La fontana di Venus and Adonis,”_

 

He feels like that might be written in Italian along with the rest he can’t read. He supposes Adonis might not be the only God of desire that visits Lust frequently. Venus of love could live here too.

 

An outpour from Venus’ mouth flows water, carrying all the daffodils that pool in the bath. They’ve floated down to Liam, bringing with it different strings of colour and familiar smells. He blinks down at it for a moment before he sticks his hands in the cool water and brings it up to his nose instead of splashing his face again, closing his eyes and leans down to inhale the smell in deep.

 

Smells like expensive perfume and rose water mixed with liquor and Jonquil. Very Zayn.

 

This is definitely water from the marsh.

 

It’s so cold despite the fire around it. Cold enough that his breath is apparent when he exhales, catching back into the water and visibly spreading out around the flower petals like ice freezing in his hand right before his eyes.

 

The evocative taste of it on his tongue has still got that magical quality of giving Liam a new breath of fresh air that replaces the tightness in his throat, opening up like a mint. The tension inside him doesn’t all get exhaled or washed away but, he finds a small calm in it still. Calm enough.

 

He makes eye contact with Venus’ still tribute and mutters a quick ‘thanks’ before grabbing the hat and quickly coming back to Lux when he hears the authorities finally catching up. These guys just don’t give up.

 

He supposes he doesn’t have to say that he thinks Lux killing himself is a really suckey idea again. Ari is already all over his case about it too.

 

A few weeks ago, after reading that book from the Miller’s archives, all Liam saw in Zayn’s body was a demon who needed to be purged back into hell by any means necessary. Now, Liam has a whole new perspective on demons, life and death.

 

Suicide isn’t anyone’s answer. Demon or human. _Murder_ suicide though? You’ve gotta be kidding.

 

That’s like _the_ most evil way to kill someone. Make them do it to themselves, like forcing someone else to do your dirty work. Washing your filthy under garment. Or like those suicidal people who throw themselves into oncoming traffic, _forcing_ someone else to murder them. Only Lux is having it worse. Being compelled to kill yourself leaves him with no choices. But Liam broke some of it so he’s fine now… _right?_

 

When Liam comes back, Lux and Ari stop talking. Ari glaring at Lux who seems to have not given Ari the straight answers he’s begging from him.

 

Liam just gives the hat to Lux and climbs over Ari’s back now in tense silence as Lux holds his waist and pushes him up on Ari.

 

He leans over Liam’s back, using his shoulder as leverage to give Ari his hat full of water now, making Liam duck forward a bit as his pervasive scent of fire that seeps through his skin fills up in Liam before he sits down. As soon as he does, Ari takes off, pouncing across the ground a few times, jerking Liam back and forth before he springs into the air as his wings beat the wind.

 

“ _Whoa,”_ Liam falls back into Lux, who ends up laughing a little when he catches Liam, holding on tight on Ari’s hood as his wings thrust a few times, jostling them about in the fashion of a mechanical bull.

 

They go straight for the clouds.

 

The initial take off is expectantly turbulent but as soon as they get into the storm Ari _screeches_ up at clouds so they part for them after the super sonic sound waves bounce off and break it apart, allowing Ari to shoot through an empty space.

 

They ride over the storm now as he lets the wind carry them, gliding through the plane above Lust. It’s much less terrifying than plummeting down a cliff.

 

As Liam looks down at the swollen clouds below them, bright flashes sparking every other second as he wraps Lux’s arms around his waist more securely. He can feel his heart pounding through his back. He moves his hands over Lux’s on his stomach now to wrap their fingers together and just like before, his murmur around his heart calms _just_ a little against Liam’s back.

 

He relaxes against Lux with a wistful sigh, kicking his leg back and forth on the side of Ari at the thick clouds below. It’s looks like the guts of a teddy bear, filled with candy floss. It makes Liam want to dive into the pools of baby pink.

 

“If you dive, I’m not catching you.”

 

Liam shakes his head against his chest with a smile. After a while of silence, Liam decides to apologise now.

 

“I’m sorry I compelled you.”

 

“Don’t _fucking_ apologise to him, Liam. You _should_ compel him.” Ari barks at him suddenly but Lux cuts him off before he can say anything else.

 

“He needs to have some _sense_ knocked into his thick skull--”

 

“Shut UP Ari!” Lux quiets him.

 

Ari doesn’t say anything else. A quiet _tsk_ on his lips and a shake of his head in distaste. But Lux’s correctness grows over him. Even though Liam gets the feeling that Ari might be a little older than him, Lux is a _very_ dominant personality.

 

When he tells Ari to do something, he doesn’t argue not matter how much he doesn’t like it.

 

Lux watches Liam for a long while in silence as Liam is looking down at the clouds his legs touch, feeling his fingers prodding up and down his gently. _Nervously._ He’s trying so hard to act like he’s not anxious but Lux can feel it all radiating off him like heat from a fireplace. He’s anxious too.

 

He knows he’s a complete asshole for what he screamed at him. Liam didn’t know what he was doing and he shouldn’t be apologising for anything because he didn’t do anything wrong. But he can’t go around compelling people at random whenever he gets an adrenaline rush. His powers get amplified when his emotion is at it’s peak.

 

Lux decides this is a good time to give Liam a little bit more than just guidance for controlling his powers.

 

A nice, healthy dish of a life lesson served with half a cup of reality.

 

He leans forward a little, bumping Liam’s head so he looks up at Lux.

 

“Do you wanna play that game?”

 

“What game?”

 

“The one we always play.”

 

Liam looks forward again, uninterested.

 

“Oh you mean _dodge_ 20 questions? I’m good, actually.”

 

Lux isn’t gonna tell him anything he actually wants to know anyways so he’ll take his obliviousness in peace.

 

 

"If we all fucking die from the secrets you guys love to keep so much then, whatever. I accept death with open legs."

 

 

Lux buttons his lips in a flat line as he nods at Liam’s sarcasm, looking ahead as he lets go of Liam’s hand and thumps the back of his ear.

 

Liam jerks up, holding the back of his head, whipping around to face Lux’s fake smile. His face isn’t so red anymore but the turmoil under his smile that he can’t hide from Liam’s senses is still felt heavy.

 

“Don’t be a cunt, sunshine. It isn’t very becoming.” He says sweetly.

 

“That’s rich coming from _you.”_

 

“Ask me something.” Lux keeps his fake smile plastered on his face instead of snapping back at Liam.

 

He simply turns around, settling between his legs again without a word.

 

“It is?” Lux leans over him, upside down.

 

“You gonna ignore me?”

 

“Said the _sybaritic incubus_ to the “stupid human”. I don’t think that’s possible.”

 

“Well… most humans are stupid, Liam.” Lux shrugs as his eyes wander upwards. Liam rolls his eyes and pushes off him.

 

“Right, I’ll never forget how stupid I am.”

 

“Liam I’m… _sorry_. I shouldn’t say that to you. That’s not true.” Lux sighs, seriously now.

 

“You’re not stupid--”

 

“You really don’t have to say sorry. I’m tired and I just wanna go back home.”

 

“You can’t go home just yet now. Not the surface or the house. Not alone.”

 

Liam squints ahead.

 

“Why?”

 

“Because this situation has turned into a whore's fencepost and I have to keep you safe and in my sight right now until you learn how to keep yourself from being hurt.”

 

Liam shakes his head as he folds his arms, chewing on the inside of his cheek pensively. He wants to laugh at Lux's weird expression but, he's too mad to laugh.

 

 

"You can laugh. It's a Greek expression."

 

 

"Can you  _not_ invade me mind please?" Liam rolls his eyes.

 

Lux’s foot nudges Liam’s back.

 

 _“Oh don’t do that,”_ Lux groans lightly. “I can’t tell you _everything_ , Liam.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because I don’t want to hurt or scare you."

 

“Then why did you tell me to ask you anything?” He leans away from Lux touching him with his leg.

 

“You can ask me whatever you want. I’ll _try_ to answer.”

 

Liam exhales deeply, staying away from getting annoyed although he feels like pushing him off Ari’s back right now.

 

“Why are you… _doing_ this?” It’s a pretty broad question so he figures Lux can choose what to answer. Any will do.

 

Lux tilts his head with his mouth turned up at Liam.

 

“Everyone dies, Liam. That’s just reality. What’s the difference when it happens? We could all die tomorrow for all you know.”

 

Liam shakes his head.

 

“That’s not anything of what I asked you.”

 

“There you go Liam,” Ari reaches behind him and gives Liam’s knee a little bump with his fist in praise.

 

“Call him out and make him _answer.”_

 

He looks back at them then.

 

“So Luxuria, why the fuck are you _really_ killing yourself? Iambic pentameter if you have to.” He says cheery and _blunt._

 

“Iambic pentameter is our cryptic way of communicating when we can’t talk about something openly. Lux said he can’t control the muscles in his mouth to talk properly. Anyone can talk with iambic pentameter.” Ari shares with Liam.

 

“Like morse code. Only instead of dots, you listen to the accent. Not meter foot - or specific pattern. Just a stressed word in a sea of unstressed words.”

 

Liam nods in understanding.

 

In iambic pentameter, you get 5 stressed syllables in the lines of each verse that you emphasise while the rest of your sentence stays unstressed.

 

So if he wanted to say: _Help me! I am dying!_ \-  he’d say something like: _My friends needed_ **_help_ ** _with writing a letter so they asked_ **_me_ ** _because_ **_I am_ ** _good at the_ **_dying_ ** _art of calligraphy._

 

\-- Or something like that. No pattern. Just 5 accentuated words.

 

“Stress five words in one verse.” Ari explains. “Five words you really mean in the sentence. Anyone listening to you you might not want to hear what you have to say will hear one thing but who you’re _really_ talking to puts those emphasised words together and they get a cryptic message while everyone else hears something else. But you have to listen _really_ closely to the stressed syllables to piece together the message properly. It’s harder than it sounds but, it works for really bad situations.”

 

That’s how poets talk.

 

Of course he and Ari have a coded way of speaking to each other.

 

“That’s pretty clever. Where’d you guys learn that?” Liam asks curiously.

 

“That’s how Narcissus talked to me and my sisters, like this fun little game where we’d figure out the sentence. He was really into poetry.” Ari says casually.

 

Oh so _fucking_ casually that he doesn’t even notice that Liam has is shitting himself with shock.

 

Okay not _actually_ shitting himself. But the shock is fucking real.

 

“How… _old_ are you?”

 

“’m 20.”

 

Liam whips back around to look at Lux quickly.

 

_“What?”_

 

 _“I  a m  t w e n t y.”_ Lux enunciates so slow that’s it’s nothing short of sarcastic as he’s looking off into space. Ari tweets in his laugh.

 

“He wasn’t talking to _you.”_ Ari looks back at Liam.

 

“Luxuria is a habitual fibber, Liam. Don’t be taken in by everything he says.” He looks over his shoulder.

 

Liam already knows that he's a huge liar. There’s no way he’s 20 years old. His murmur in his chest sometimes and even spoils it before he even gets them out. Like he builds up to tell a lie and his heart beats him to it.

 

“20? Are you kidding me? You have the mentality of a bloody 5 year old as it is. Remy is more mature than you at 15.”

 

“You’re 17.” Liam states.

 

Lux sits up quickly and plucks one of Ari’s feathers behind him for calling him out, making him yell out a whistle note, jostling them a little when he jumps. Lux looks at Liam then.

 

“My “age” is too complicated for you to understand.”

 

Liam squints, looking back at Ari.

 

“How old is he really?”

 

Ari nods from side to side.

 

“It’s… very complicated, he’s not lying about that. But he’s _not_ older than me that’s for certain. I was like 2 or 3 years old when we first met him which was sometime after he was born I’m pretty sure. _I’m almost 20_. My cousin, Xhane is also 19 and we’re the youngest lilith's in Lust. Lux has been 17 for… a while. This is the first time his face actually starting to line up with his apparent age. He used to look older than what he actually was. Now he’s looking his age but from this point on, he’s gonna be looking younger than what he is.”

 

Liam squints at Ari.

 

“How is your cousin a witch?”

 

“Her mum’s side.” Ari rolls his eyes. “ _I_ have no relation to _that_.” He makes sure to clarify.

 

“Don’t get me wrong, I love Xiomara. But my uncle was _outcasted_ for marrying her mother. My dad didn’t talk to his own brother for 15 years. They warned him not to fuck around with witches but he didn’t listen. Then she saddles him with a kid and takes off right after.”

 

Liam has been getting the impression that witches and demons don’t get along from not only Lux but even Sophia too. Like classic enemies.

 

Vampires vs. werewolves. Cats vs. dogs. The British public vs. Russell Brand.

 

But despite the conflict, they _both_ seem to cast that regard aside when it comes to Gods.

 

Sophia’s coven actually have an allegiance with a demon God. Xhane’s gonna be a Goddess soon and rule over an entire undead realm so obviously her status in the Underworld is well respected despite that making her a witch too.

 

“I’ve nothing against witches myself,” Ari makes clear so his prejudice isn’t misinterpreted.

 

“Even though lightning bird’s have actually been hunting wiccans for the last few centuries but that’s only because witches enslaved our entire species for thousands of years. So, karma’s a bitch. But I don't hold any grudges _personally_. Ask anyone, I’m pretty chill. Never been into hunting myself.”

 

Liam isn’t going to throw away everything he read in those books. It’s not even that they’re inaccurate. They’re just super _biased._ Being _allies_ and being _slaves_ to witches are obviously world's apart. Witches seem very manipulative, he’s noticed.

 

But despite the manipulation and erasure of history in their archives, for the most part everything he read has been helping Liam follow along without being lost when he’s talking to people from the underworld. So he can actually hold a decent conversation about this stuff. Maybe not a _Harry_ level of conversation but, he's getting there with it.

 

“It’s not personal, Xhane’s mum was always just a total asshole who left her child and husband behind for a damn wizard so Xhane had to come live here with my uncle. She was the only descendant of Hecate and even _she_ doesn’t seem to claim her own daughter since she’s giving everything to Xhane. Luxie’s sister, Dia married my uncle after his wife left him and they had Pipa together a few years ago. Got a divorce right after. And so on and so forth.”

 

So then that means Lux’s favourite niece is actually Xhane’s little sister. It seems like there’s no end to how complicated Lux’s life is. Liam is simple and boring compared to him. Not for the last several weeks but, before that. Simple dimple.

 

“Luxie’s never aged. _Pipa_ will be 20 before he is.”

 

“How did you know Nars?”

 

“Baby birds age really fast. If you met me or my sisters at 2 years old, you’d probably think we were like 10. I haven’t really aged that much since I was born either.”

 

Liam bites his lips in as he frowns.

 

To never age and watch your loved one’s grow old around you, even if Liam doesn’t have that much family by blood, he’d think it would be pretty lonely and depressing to watch all his friends die while he stayed young forever like how Ari and Lux are.

 

Immortality doesn’t sound appealing to him at all.

 

It doesn’t sound like something Zayn would _ever_ want either. These are the reasons Liam still can’t accept that Nars was really Zayn. Sure, they have a tonne of indisputable things in common but the little details of Zayn’s true personality that you can’t change or it’ll be a totally different person are completely wrong. Little details that fit together to give you a real picture of how Zayn really is as a person.

 

He’s the type of person who doesn’t explicitly say he hates being alive and almost everyone that surrounds him but instead does destructive things to those said people and himself.

 

Drink too much until he’s legitimately dead. Party too hard until he can’t remember what he did the next day. Come to school really high and not pay attention in class even though he managed to keep his grades high too somehow. Maybe sleep with people who’d potentially hurt him. Alienate and distance himself from everyone for a while at random.

 

That’s not all he is but, it’s a large part of how he’s lived and Liam just ignored it. Even when his behaviour was totally out of whack, after he got possessed, Liam still chose to _ignore it_.

 

That’s not someone who wants to live forever. That’s someone who doesn’t care. About his life or his actions… even if that gets him killed. And suddenly, as Liam reflects… that sounds exactly like Narcissus.

 

The whole immortality bit just kills the connection to Zayn. Liam supposes if that was his only way out of hell, the desperation to get to the surface again wouldn’t have left him with too many options.

 

“If you want to know how long Lux has been outside of a _body,_ no one can tell you an exact date.” Ari continues, “No one else was there when he was born. Whatever Zayn’s birthday is probably right behind Lux’s. But the actual day we met him was so fucking _chaotic,_ ” Ari shakes his head.

 

“Everyone was losing their fucking minds because Nars was gone. No one knew how long Lux had been in the house for by himself cause we hadn’t seen Nars in _months_ . He would disappear like that all the time so it wasn’t out of the ordinary for him to not talk to anyone or leave the house for a while. My dad and uncle, who’s Xhane’s dad, and Luxie’s brothers, and Luke’s dad had come to Nars’ house to take him out with our families when we were all like 2 but he wasn’t there. I remember the first time I saw Luxie. He was so _scared_. All he would say was -- OUCH!”

 

Ari squawks in pain again when Lux rips out a hand full of feathers roughly, making Ari hit him in the face with his tail.

 

“Does _ANYONE_ ever just shut the FUCK UP? He didn’t ask you for your whole life’s story.”

 

“Keep rippin’ out my _fuckin’_ ere and ’m not catchin’ you when you _FALL OFF!”_ Ari’s tail hits him again harder. When he’s angry, his accent gets really thick. That signature not so posh tongue that makes him sound like he’s definitely from Manningtree.

 

Liam finally breaks into a wide grin that makes Lux roll his eyes as his fist hits Ari again, turning away from both of them.

 

He is _so red_ in the face when he’s upset _._ It seems to have been permanently painted this lovely shade since they were in the woods. This time, it’s from embarrassment, not anger.

 

“Stop _looking_ at me,” he hisses, pulling his knees up but Liam shakes his head no, turning around to face him with his smile that lights up his face.

 

Lux finally saying his name and age feels like the whole world shifted a little. Even if he lied, it’s better than nothing.

 

He’s cracked the door open _just_ enough for Liam to see inside. Cause even if Lux is almost made of darkness in there, if you open a door in a dark room even the tiniest bit, light will still flood in. And that’s what his name is.

 

Lux.

 

“I’m not taking my body over your life, babe.” Liam sighs. “You try so hard to act like you don’t care.”

 

“Why can’t you just leave it?” Lux shakes his head towards the sky.

 

“Why can’t you just tell me why you’re doing this? There’s obviously something _wrong_ with you--”

 

“COMPULSION is what’s wrong with me! You can’t see or move when someone _compels you!”_ He cuts Liam off.

 

“The desire on the tongue of a demon can _tempt_ you into something you _can choose_ or _force_ you to do shit you _can’t refuse_ . _”_ He gestures between them.

 

“ _You_ can’t just blurt shit at me when you feel an adrenaline rush. Because that’s not adrenaline, it’s _compulsion._ My entire world is your desires. Spitting it out with your words _forces_ me into it.”

 

“So you’re basically admitting that none of what’s happening is actually by choice.”

 

“No, Liam… just, _fuck-_ ” His voice breaks off as he winces, holding his stomach.

 

“Here’s what’s happening Liam.” Ari decides to chime since Lux is struggling to talk through the pain in his stomach.

 

“Lux can change what you want through very _sexy_ persuasions. Compulsion is different from the rest of a demon’s power over the mind. _Being_ compelled leaves you no options like the others. You can’t say no. For someone like Lux who is already compulsive as _fuck_ on both ends, he can’t control himself because of it and it’s hard to control him. Because his core is pure _lust_ . But his core is also fucking _explosive_ because we’re surrounded by hellfire. Lust for Lux easily drives someone else’s desire into his mind so he can only fixate on doing that one sole thing they want him to do. A.K.A. _compulsion_.”

 

Liam realises that’s actually equivalent to, if not _worse_ than mind control. Because at least with your mind you can overpower it with your own thoughts. But Lux isn’t his own thought. Therefore compulsion is his worst nightmare. _Anyone_ can make him do _anything._

 

He’s not sure if being compelled makes you think it’s what you really want or not.

 

Liam’s passionate, adrenaline rush that ambushed Lux for him stay alive is combatting against someone _else’s_ desire for him to do the opposite. And Liam knows it’s not Zayn that’s compelling him. Zayn would never willingly make someone _kill himself._ Liam is certain.

 

“Did your brother do it?” Liam asks him.

 

His answer is a hesitation that confirms Liam’s suspicion and dread.

 

After explaining to Liam how his pit affects his life, it’s clear that his brother uses his compulsive nature to make him do things he doesn’t want to do. Liam could understand why he would’ve done that when Lux was first born since he was _apparently_ 100% dependent and insensible like a baby but, Lux has learned how to function completely on his own now and he can make his own decisions without someone forcing him into one.

 

Even if he somehow finds ways to get out of doing certain things, like going to school, a reflection is almost like a _slave_ to everyone else. And on top of it, he’s gotta dodge everyone’s emotion and desire around him too. The curse that binds him to everyone else’s will. He’s like a puppet. His life is the wrong hands can be his greatest detriment. Liam decides his siblings _are_ the wrong hands.

 

Liam never would’ve thought of a reflection or his personal thoughts as beings that could have their own lives and feelings. Because they can’t. But now that he’s met Lux, his perspective on everything in his life has been changing drastically. Because even a passing thought can be something you shouldn’t neglect to take into consideration. Leaving Lux to die feels physically impossible for Liam to accept.

 

“Liam you don’t understand. I can’t _explain_ this to you guys in a way you’ll understand.” Lux sighs tiredly.

 

“Actually, I think I do.” Liam nods, forming his own picture of what the hell is going on since no one wants to tell him.

 

Lux didn’t come back here thinking he was gonna _die_. Of course he doesn’t actually want to die.

 

He even told Safaa he’d be right back because he thought there would be an answer to getting Liam back to normal and he'd come back to the surface.

 

He came back home to ask his brother what to do and he told him to _kill himself_ and compelled him to make sure he actually does it even though Liam is 100% sure that’s not the only answer but since Lux has to do what he’s told, it is. And he deserves a better brother.

 

Even for a demon, that’s a _horrible_ thing to make someone to do. This goes beyond death for Lux.

 

While Lux has given him a new view of consciousness and the power of the human mind, the pit in his gut has given Liam a bit of a new perspective on _demons_.

 

It’s not a pit of evil. It’s a pit of darkness.

 

It doesn’t make _him_ evil. Not anymore than what he was already capable of before. Like punching someone in the face or actually fucking someone into a mattress. It’s just given him super-human capabilities that make those choices hold more mass.

 

Pure darkness isn’t _evil_ . It’s simply the absence of light, which darkness eats. Like a black hole that forms when a star collapses on itself and continues to swallow any light energy it comes into contact with. Being in the dark _can_ lead to bad things since you can’t see clearly in the dark but it doesn’t _have_ to be something bad. That’s a choice.

 

A demon’s pit of darkness is like Liam owning a knife. He can choose to go around stabbing people with it just like anyone else who owns a knife or a fork or a fucking bazooka can go and terrorise anyone they want. But people usually don’t because that kind of behaviour is generally not cool.

 

The choice is just there, sitting in his solid gut.

 

It’s what he chooses to do with his pit that makes it evil. Like choosing to kill someone with it. His lack of control over it makes that choice _murky_ , which is why Lux says demons who can’t control themselves are the worst kind.

 

Lashing out randomly and threatening to kill people and getting into really bad fights, tossing them around carelessly. Or blurting out things without thinking about the affects of it. Or _biting_ someone. Self-control is key here. Self-control allows for you to make a decision and choosing what you believe is right.

 

Lux doesn’t get that choice at all. He can’t control how he feels because of lust and he can’t control what he wants because of it and apparently, anyone can control his actions and force him to actually _do_ something with compulsion. Even something as horrible as sacrificing his own life.

 

Liam’s still learning about demons in relation to nature and the world around him. Cause they share the exact same nature as humans. Some are evil, some aren't. Some aren’t even from hell. Some demons are from Earth too. Some are humans _themselves_.

 

A demon’s reality of morals and standard of behaviour isn’t so different from humanity… especially demons like Zayn’s that actually came _from_ his humanity.

 

Ava is the materialistic nature of Zayn’s humanity.

 

What he does in his free time isn’t any different from humans who hunt animals for their clothes and entertainment.

 

Morosa seemingly got his alpha-complex in the same way as Ava.

 

She hunts because she’s the dominant over humans since humanity is a literal subspecies to her kind.

 

Not that Zayn went around torturing people in the same way they do but… he wasn’t exactly nice to his peers and his demons manifesting like that doesn’t totally shock Liam. Even if he had his own internal reasons for his actions. He _did_ have an established and intimidating dominance over everyone socially.

 

The comparison of demons to humanity doesn’t make it _right_. It’s just given Liam a new awareness that demons really aren’t any more evil than humans. We’re all capable of being evil and we’re all more than capable of sin.

 

Even hell has a certain standard of what is acceptable behaviour. Taking mortality into your own hands seems to be universally wrong no matter what.

 

So when Liam looks at the rules of the underworld, especially in _Lust,_ about life and death, he knows Ace making Lux kill himself is _wrong_ even for a demon’s standard. Because Ace won’t be punished for taking death into his own hands here. _Lux will._

 

How can he be that apathetic to his own little brother to not care about his life at all? He _raised_ him.

 

Liam knows that’s not the only way to get his pit out because it came into his body so it _can_ be removed too. Maybe not the same way, since Lux would die if he sucked it back out and Liam would die if he purged it but there has to be way more than just those options. Liam can pass through his own skin without dying. He knows his pit can too.

 

Hell, maybe he should just go back and take a dip in the Acheron. Even though that was the most terrifying thing Liam has ever experienced in his fucking _life_ , he never finished that bath and he’s sure if he let those dickless mannequins do their thing, he’d be cleaned out completely.

 

Maybe he could even take his pit out his _self._ And Zayn’s. And then Lux’s.

 

Well... maybe it can’t go _that_ far. His kakos is what’s keeping him alive, pumping in his chest. It’s functioning as his heart. Taking it out to rid him of lust would sort of be like trying to save someone from a life-threatening disease by removing all their vital organs - even though you stopped the disease, you’re still completely missing the mark by more than likely killing them anyways.

 

The point is, he doesn’t care how they do it, he just wants Lux to be free from this too. _Alive._

 

Lux rolls his eyes, unfolding his arms.

 

“Look… I’m sorry I got you dragged into all this.” Lux sighs as he sits up. “I _promise_ you, nothing that’s happened to us is your fault, I shouldn’t have said that to you. I’m just… _fucking_ hungry and emotionally fucked up right now and _hormonal._ My mood is totally off balance and I’m… _aroused?_ For some reason? Or…. anxious… like I’m gonna be sick again all over this goddamn _bird_ with all this shit crawling around in my stupid gut.”

 

Lux squints to himself in confusion as he shakes his head and Liam snorts, quickly covering a hand over his mouth as he laughs. He doesn’t mean to laugh at him but… his perplexed state of being utterly _lost_ because he has feelings is terribly endearing.

 

Lux looks at him and laughs too.

 

“This isn’t fucking _funny!”_ He kicks Liam’s leg to the side.

 

“I am battling through like 8 different layers of conflicting emotion slithering in my damn tummy right now and you’re _laughing_ at me?”

 

Liam shakes his head as he grins.

 

“I swear I’m not laughing _at_ you. You’re just--”

 

“Yeah, I like you and you make me nervous. I’m not stupid.” Lux scoffs, turning away from him.

 

“I’ve never felt… _stuff_ before on his level before and I can’t make it stop. It’s on a body-deep, _visceral_ level which is why we’re going into the clouds away from everything so I can calm down.”

 

Lux holds his stomach as he squeezes his eyes closed again like before, pacing his breath silently as he holds back being sick.

 

Liam watches his hand pressing into his gut again, _right_ where all the churning would be and Liam realises what he’s actually feeling now isn’t going to go away no matter how far away they get from civilisation. Cause Liam can feel it too. He’s feeling it from _Lux_ and it’s not sexual arousal at all. Even if Liam has been feeling it since he’s been conscious, he’s not used to it either.

 

He’s not in pain. He’s just got butterflies in his stomach.

 

Liam’s not gonna laugh at him, he’s _not_ . He knows your digestive system is directly linked to your thoughts and emotions and feeling your sensitive stomach muscles fluttering like that for the first time, especially when you’ve never had a _body,_ would be really freaky and he’s shocked he isn’t still throwing up. But seeing him go through something as innocent as feeling butterflies in his stomach and _completely_ freaking out over it reminds Liam of when he stuck his crooked rose behind his ear on the patio.

 

It makes him seem kind of soft.

 

He acts like he’s not afraid of anything. He doesn’t _want_ to be soft. But underneath the layers he’s puts up on the outside of himself… he _is_ really soft in there. Even through all the darkness. Despite all his efforts to stay mysterious, Liam can see that now too.

 

“Luxie,” Liam nudges him gently. “It’s fine. I’ve felt it my entire _life…_ you don’t have to turn away from me. They’re just butterflies.”

 

“Oh my god,” Lux pulls away from him. “You are just so… _frustrating,_ I don’t **_like this._ ** _”_ His body twitches at the last words, calming again right after as he closes his eyes, pacing his breath before he flips out again.

 

“Liam, he’s never had a body before. He doesn’t know what having a crush feels like.” Ari snorts behind them.

 

“I KNOW what having a “crush” and “butterflies” are.” Lux does air quotes, clearly not really knowing what that really means.

 

“I’m just….” His face breaks as he sits back against Ari again, losing the words as he tries to express himself. His emotion really _is_ battling inside him and Liam feels really bad for laughing now.

 

“I’m not what you _think_ I am, Liam.” He finally gets out. “These aren’t _mine_.” He points to his belly.

 

He doesn’t _always_ lose Liam but he does when he says something and then never elaborates on what he means or even bother to finish his thought.

 

Communicating his thoughts verbally has always been an issue for Zayn so Lux is even _harder_ to figure out but, Liam is determined to make himself clear so Lux understands this isn’t something he’s letting go of. Ever.

 

“I don’t _care_ . What you _are_ .” Liam says slow and clear. “At this point, with _immortality_ being a thing you can simply trade off in deals, ANYONE dying right now is unacceptable.”

 

Lux only shakes his head, rolling his eyes up.

 

“THAT is what I’m fucking talking about. You _don’t_ understand. You think I can’t die because I’m a demon. This is not a simple situation we are all _drowning in._ Immortality is fucking expensive _._ It costs more than all the currency in this _galaxy_ could ever afford you with. It cost _him_ 1,000 years of one life and a majority of his _spirit_ . Eternal life doesn’t just get handed out to any fucking body who asks for it. Selling your _soul_ to death is the worst fucking thing to sell yourself to because Nars didn’t have a lot of anything left in him when he went to hell to begin with. His will to stay alive was completely _gone_ . Whatever was left of when he got cursed was ripped out of him _forever_ , literally leaving behind an empty shell with chunks of his soul scarred and scattered around in hell. He sold a very large portion of his _humanity_ that only left him with a body. Unless you’ve got a spare soul lying around, _I will never afford to be immortal._ Demons are not immortal beings. One step above humans, one below Gods.”

 

Liam holds his head a little, trying to take in what Lux is saying.

 

It’s _intense_ to accept that their talking about Zayn. So intense, he still can’t seem to make himself believe or accept this is their reality.

 

Parts of his soul being damaged and broken up into pieces that Death owns now. But he’s not gonna breakdown in the face of it now. Even if it feels like they’re talking about a fucking dead person. Liam can’t let himself breakdown and cave in.

 

“I don’t have a soul to sell.” Lux continues after a brief pause when he sees Liam taking in his truth with a a building endurance to accept it.

 

 _“Immortal_ is not my name.”

 

“Then what IS your name? Your _full name_. Tell me so I can understand since I am so goddamn oblivious, Lux.” Liam rolls his eyes now.

 

“It’s a real mouthful, mate.” Ari chirps. “Doesn’t even really translate to English.”

 

Lux’s eyes go past Liam for a moment as he pauses, looking at Ari now.

 

“You don’t exist in this A and B conversation. You are a _vehicle_.”

 

Ari shakes his head but he doesn’t talk back this time.

 

His faded eyes focus on Liam again, doing that disconcerting unblinking thing again.

 

“Like how Harry the soul-child genius always says, after death is rebirth and life. You need to start listening to what your friends tell you. The kid may be weird but all of what he says is true. Rebirth is for _souls_ most of the time if you don’t go to hell or some other world _._ That’s not where I’m headed, that’s where _Zayn_ is headed. What you call a soul for me is only a few piece of someone else’s. That doesn’t amount to much to continue to live. It’s _just_ enough for me to appear to be alive right now. I know feel like I’m a real person to you but there’s nothing I can do to get you to understand that the illusion of what I am is _just_ an illusion. I’m not much of anything when I’m outside of his body _completely_. You can see and feel me, yes. But I can assure you, when I’m not in here the illusion will be gone and you won’t know the difference. I don’t exist in a reality _you_ can actually comprehend… you won’t even feel that I’m gone. Only Zayn will know. He is the only person that will _ever_ know I’m gone. You don’t love _me._ You love Zayn. I’m not Zayn, I’m just an _imitation Zayn._ I’m telling you this from _experience._ ”

 

Liam supposes he’s talking about his experience with hanging out with all Zayn’s old, past friends that he sleeps with now. And the fact that he’s repeating what Luke said so _infuriating_.

 

He didn’t really go that far when he and Ari left cause he’d never leave Liam with strangers without being close by so of course he heard everything they said about him. He’s most likely already heard it a million times.

 

Lux isn’t oblivious either. Unlike Zayn, everyone _hates_ him. Even his own brothers apparently.

 

Of course he knows Nars’ friends, like Ace and Adonis, don’t actually like him like how they would Zayn. Some of them just get to have sex with him now. He knows that he’s not really well liked amongst his peers. Like that geeky guy that came to prom alone. Except the guy the Lux is, isn’t really geeky and he’s carrying a loaded weapon so everyone keeps an understandable _distance_.

 

But Lux doesn’t understand that Liam doesn’t want him alive because he’s _technically_ a piece of Zayn. He’d still want him alive even if he had nothing to do with Zayn. And that’s because he isn’t worthless and he isn’t _nothing._ He’s lots of things to Zayn and Liam right now but the most important one is that he’s _Lux_ and his life is just as valuable as anyone’s.

 

“Liam,” His face falls as he blinks again, shaking his head downwards before looking at Liam again.

 

“I _know_ what you want. You _think_ it’s me. It’s confusing, I know it’s _fucking_ confusing. But what you’re feeling isn’t coming from me. You’re not gonna be feeling that when I come out. I can’t stress _enough_ how much of a waste of time dwelling this is.” He’s begging Liam to drop it now but that’s never gonna happen.

 

As long as Lux is alive and not trying to cause harm, he’s not letting him leave like that. Because he doesn’t deserve it. He can do whatever the fuck he wants when he and Zayn separate. As long as it’s what _he_ wants. Not his brothers or Zayn or Liam or anyone else’s desire. Just his own.

 

“I don’t think me valuing your life is a “feeling” that’s just gonna away. I said I love you _too_ because you feel it too. We obviously care about each other’s lives. We’re _friends_ Lux. There’s nothing confusing about that.”

 

Okay that is a total lie on every last few words. It’s confusing as fuck and they’re way more than just friends at this point but there isn’t a label for what you call your boyfriend’s demon/live consciousness so he rolling with a simple one.

 

Liam goes on without reneging on his poor choice of words.

 

“I am a master of astral projection and many planes of existence or whatever. I _can_ feel you on your stupid “nonexistent” plane, which is complete bull by the way but if that’s what you want to call where you are then whatever. _I can exist in a mirror_ . That’s how I know you’re real too and I’m helping regardless of what you say. How do you expect me to let you evanesce? That’s _terrible_.”

 

“Those are some pretty fancy words you’re slinging there.” Lux smiles.

 

Those are words _Lux_ gave him that he doesn’t want to lose. He learns _a lot_ from Lux because he’s constantly teaching him things he never even thought about before. The meaning of existing and the fragility of life with death following it closely behind. It’s incredibly surreal but it’s where Liam is and where they’ve always been. Everyone that’s ever existed. He’ll never take any aspect of his life for granted ever again.

 

Lux told him those word to describe why his voice doesn’t phase through the glass completely. He’s evanescent. Something that dissipates and fades away like vapour when it’s let go of. Out of sight, out of memory and out of existence completely, as fleeting as a passing thought. But just because he _can_ be let go of and forgotten doesn’t mean he has to be.

 

“Luxie, seriously.”

 

“This is a losing argument and total waste of breath.” He shrugs. “Of course you want to help cause you’re _Liam._ But you can’t help Zayn without _hurting_ yourself _._ I’m a demon. I was born this way and I’m going that way. Demons that are born as they are _stay_ as they are. Sins don’t get repentance.”

 

“That is such a _lie._ I’ve never really been that religious but even _I_ know that sins can be forgiven or something. Because you’re not _just_ a sin. You’re a part of Zayn’s spirit--”

 

“When he purged me,” Lux cuts him off through clenched teeth,

 

“... that part of his spirit became _demonic_. I can’t be changed back into what I was before. I am a _demon_ right now. So is Ari. Sort of.” Lux rubs Ari’s ass behind him, squeezing _generously_ over his tight jeans until his tail quickly swipes his hand off, wrapping around Lux’s wrist and jerking his arm up.

 

“ _Aye,_ you can look but don’t _touch.”_ Ari chirps at him with a grimace, making Lux wink at Ari when he glares at Lux, letting go of his wrist.

 

For some reason, even though Lux has weird relationships with some of his friends where he sleeps with them, Liam knows he doesn’t with Ari.

 

Their banter is really _intimate_ but he knows Lux doesn’t go any further with him than Harry would with Liam. Maybe certain personal boundaries that normal friends have are nonexistent but Liam can see where the line is clearly drawn between them. They’ve probably been friends since the beginning of time.

 

He seems to have given up trying to get through to Lux but Liam is just as stubborn as Lux and he doesn’t care if this argument is between two stone walls. He’s got nothing but time so this can keep going until they’re both worn out and actually died… which he gets how antithetical that it, totally defeating the point but the _original_ point is clear and it still stands.

 

Surprisingly, Lux takes Liam’s hands into his despite his discomfort with touching Liam right now, bouncing them between them and ignoring his nervous pulse.

 

“Right,” He inhales deep. “ _You’re_ not supposed to be a demon. Ever.” Their eyes stay locked so it resonates for a moment in silence.

 

“I didn’t know what him biting you would do to _your_ body. Any other human would be fine but, you’re _different_ from most. I’d never heard of a human existing on a subtle plane before and I didn’t know how to get it out of you without killing you. I didn’t _want_ to leave without saying anything but I HAD to show Zayn his house before he got us fuckng killed in Cocytus. And your fucking girlfriend was going to kill us so I _panicked_ . I didn’t know what else to do. My brother always tells me what to do when I need _help_ . That’s why I left like that, I _was_ going to come back. And I know I said I wasn’t going to leave you but that was _before_ he bit you and before I found out what it can do to your body. So no, when I got here I didn’t think I was ever gonna see you again but you weren’t gonna remember this ever happening anyways and Zayn would be fine. He’s not gonna be reborn on the surface, I can heal his heart on my own. But now you’re _here_ and I’ve really fucked up _a lot_ today and we need to see Xhane so you and everyone else that saw you can forget what happened down there and I KNOW you want to know what’s going on but I’m trying to _protect_ you from things here and knowing too much can fuck up your mind. Because this is HELL and there are things here you _cannot_ see or know about because it will ruin you forever. There’s some things you just can’t heal from and I don’t want that to have to be you.” He admits.

 

He pauses for a moment again as he looks Liam in the eye for all of 5 _excruciatingly_ long seconds. And then… his eyes flick down to his lips and a chill moves through Liam. Even with his faded eyes, he suddenly looks _exactly_ like Zayn, avoiding direct eye contact.

 

His heart begins to stutter right after then, signaling that whatever he’s about to say is going to be a lie.

 

“Cleaning it out of you _completely_ could take years. We don’t have years. That’s why I’m doing this regardless of anything… I’d still do it for you because this is _my choice._ Not because they’re making me. Not because I’m in “love” with you. I’m _Lust._ Lust isn’t love. It’s desire. My _name_ isn’t Lux, that’s just what he called me.”

 

Liam’s face pinches a little when Lux says that.

 

_Does he mean Nars?_

 

He doesn’t interrupt Lux as his thoughts start turning the gears again.

 

“Lux is light. I’m not light.” He lets go of Liam’s left hand to point his fingers to his chest, looking down completely now.

 

“I am made out of complete _darkness_ . My humour is dark because I’m full of black bile. My hellfire is _black_ and my name means _death_ so my fire brings that to anyone I want if I touch you with it _._ An insatiable beast lusts for sin inside me. There is no light in me. Yeah, I can make sweet _sweet_ love to you,” His eyes close as he tilts his head slightly to emphasise his words.

 

“I can love you down _exactly_ how you want it, make you feel like the most loved bean in the whole wide world.” He looks at Liam again.

 

“I can _shower_ you in it if you want. Because I can _mimic_ it and give you the dangerous illusion that I am human. That’s what demon's do. Giving your heart and soul to a demon is _direful_ Liam. Thinking you love me is equivalent to suicide. You have to understand that there’s a difference between lust and love even though they share traits and feel the same. It’s not. Do I want you? Of course. You have a soul. I’m always gonna want you, naturally. Do I like you? Absolutely. You’re hilarious and I like talking to you and hearing you tell me what you’re thinking about. I like looking at you. And I _really_ liked fucking you… but that’s not the point nor is this the time or place. Lust and sex isn’t love. _If_ I said that to you - which I didn’t - it’s because I’m in Zayn. When I’m in Zayn, I talk through _Zayn_. His words aren’t mine.”

 

Liam has an internal groan at how easily Lux just straight up lies right to his face even when they _both_ know he’s not even trying to hide that he’s lying when it’s now open knowledge that he’s not actually made of just Zayn’s lust. There’s other parts of him he’s made of too that give him his personality and consciousness with the emotion because he still exists when his lust is gone from his nonexistent body. In fact, he’s not even a _demon_ without it.

 

He’s Zayn on the other side of the mirror.

 

“Regardless of anything.” Lux sighs deeply. “Whatever happens to me isn’t the focus of anything here. _You_ are the centre of this universe. And you’re not dying while I’m here.”

 

“ _Everyone_ dies.” Liam parrots his words. Lux shakes his head.

 

“You’re not _everyone._ ”

 

He looks down as he smiles a little, scratching under his nose.

 

“You wanna know what _I_ really want?”

 

Liam waits for him to go on with his false words.

 

Liam can tell exactly when he’s lying even without his heart. He has more of those indisputable Zayn mannerisms more and more everyday that tell Liam everything more than his words do.

 

Liam reads his body language and his gestures.

 

See how his touches become too intimate, forced in jittery hands between them. The vibration in him is subtle. But it’s still there, all over his body. How they avert their eyes and touch their face. Lick the the inside of their cheeks or hold their an unsteady gaze. Choke up on words. Nod too soon and blink to fast.

 

It’s all _patiently_ untrue. But Liam listens anyways so he can believe the opposite.

 

“I want you to be alive and safe. And I want you to be human. When you go home, I want you to leave this horror show behind and forget it ever happened with your amnesia or whatever the fuck you do to forget traumatic, fucked up shit and if you don’t forget, I know a witch that can _make_ you. I want you to wait for Zayn to come and find you again and you guys live your life and make out at the back of movie theatres like he likes and hold hands in public like how you like and travel the world like you always said you would and get married and make super adorable, weird flower-star babies the way you were always going too before I broke out of my house and made your life crazy. I want that cause I want _you_ to be happy _._ I know you’re _not_ here because of how shitty I’m making everything but this is hell. It won’t be like this forever. But Zayn will. I promise.”

 

It’s not a complete lie. It’s a _clever_ one. Those aren’t his words. He’s picked that directly from somewhere in Zayn’s mind. Because that’s what Zayn wants.

 

Maybe Lux does want Liam to go on with his life unscathed but Liam knows what he _actually_ wants and has always wanted way before Liam… is _freedom_.

 

But he doesn’t get what he wants because his entire being is too overwhelmed and _overpowered_ with giving everyone else what they want. Which currently is wanting him to die. Maybe he’s not telling the truth because his mouth physically _can’t_ say those exact words.

 

Even if he thinks he’s protecting Liam from something by not telling him what’s really going on, keeping him in the dark about everything is going to have a snowball effect that will end with everything crashing at the finish line like it always does.

 

Maybe they don’t realise that but Liam can feel that stronger than anything else right now. The longer they keep secrets, the worse the end of this will be.

 

“Don’t be taken in by everything he says, Liam.” Ari says seriously, no hint of a joke in his tone this time. Of course Ari knows Lux is lying about something too.

 

Lux doesn’t hit him or tell him to shut up. He only bites in his lip, shaking his head to the side.

 

“Who even cares what I say.” Lux looks back at Liam again with a careless shrug.

 

“All my words will leave you when your pit does.”

 

“I don’t want to _forget_ you.” Liam pulls his hands away from his clinging to his too shakily, careful not to push up on the adrenaline trying to escape and compel Lux again.

 

“Seriously, if this is really _your_ resolve, then what’s the point in even doing this if everything is in vain? Trying to talk to you for _fuck all_ isn’t it?” Liam throws his hands up, turning away.

 

“You’re killing yourself, Zayn’s “friends” are keeping him here forever and I’m not doing an iota of anything _useful_. I should just go home and call it a fucking day.” Liam winces at his own swearing.

 

He’s never really liked talking like that. It feels really rude. But everything is shit so he might as well just call it what it is.

 

[ _(soft tones on a stormy evening)_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPmFZgfbWJ4)

 

They ride in silence for a bit, riding through miles of valentine clouds, thunder sounding in faint rustles below them, festering in the clouds before breaking out to ring around the space.

 

“You really wanna go home?” Lux asks behind him. Liam shrugs. Lux already knows what he wants.

 

“Do _you_ want me to go home?”

 

“Would it make a difference?”

 

 _“Yes.”_ He says softly so the “who can scream louder?” feast doesn’t start again.

 

Liam looks at Lux.

 

“ _Yes_ . It makes a difference because _you_ make a difference and that’s the entire point. It doesn’t matter if I won’t remember you. _Nothing_ will ever change that you were here or that I care about you deep inside my _heart_ . You will _always_ make a difference to me. You walked into my life and made an alteration in the space you occupy. I can feel it because I feel _everything_ around me and it feels suffocating sometimes… like it’s all bottling up and I keep my emotion _dead_ so I can’t feel it anymore but it doesn’t mean it isn’t there _._ It’ll _never_ be the same space again, even after you leave cause now there’s gonna be something missing forever. No one can walk into someone’s life and just walk out on them without it making a difference. Even after I forget you, our paths still intertwine and I will _never_ be the same person ever again. You make a difference Lux. This is your _life_ and I want it to be protected too.”

 

Lux keeps his mouth closed as he’s struck by his words.

 

 _God_ he hates Zayn’s body. Every second with Liam, he feels something new he’s never felt before.

 

There seems to be an infinite amount of feelings Zayn has for Liam and finding them all the more he’s settled in this body is a rollercoaster ride through hell as his mimpathy has been slowly _,_ transforming into compathy. Actually _feeling_ his emotion instead of just mimicking it, sharing it inside as his own as their double-mindedness aligns again for the 100th fucking time today. Cause right now, he’s feeling something that’s burning in his chest like a volcano.

 

He thinks it might be the opposite of his twin sin, when you feel happy for someone’s torture except you’ve replaced happiness with sorrow. Because something inside Liam is being _strangled_ that he’s trying so hard not to acknowledge and he thinks it’s from him but it’s from _Zayn_ and he’s projecting all his fucking emotions on Lux.

 

He now sees how spectacularly he’s failed at this whole attachment shit. He keeps forgetting that Liam has a traumatic and intensely suppressed emotional experience with people _leaving him_.

 

After hearing the awful sound of his voice breaking through walls of their room the first night Liam cracked open… he _never_ wants Liam to go through anything like that ever again and he wishes he could drag all of that out of him for good so he doesn’t feel it anymore - which Lux _can_ do for him but… Lux isn’t the greatest at draining. Taking someone’s pain is fucking _intense_ when he’s in his right mind. He’s only ever done it once by mistake and it almost _killed_ him… with Niall.

  
  
Lux caves a little.

 

He has to give Liam _something_ . He can’t take his watery brown eyes begging him for the answers he _can’t_ give him and he can’t let him leave here.

 

But he can give him an alternative to something else he’s been dying to know. He can tell Liam everything about who he really is so he’ll better understand why Zayn is like this since the more he learns about Zayn’s past and internal issues, the more Lux realises Zayn seems like a stranger to him now.

 

Liam wants to ask but his mouth can’t seem to form the question either.

 

It won’t matter if he knows too much about Lux anymore. He won’t notice when he doesn’t have it anymore.

 

“I can literally go back to the Acheron and it will be cleaned out of me in seconds.”

 

“You’re not doing that either.”

 

Liam shakes his head in confusion.

 

“Why is it so wrong for you to LIVE?”

 

“Liam… you just can’t leave right now. And if I stay _alive_ , he will always want to _die_ every time he sees himself.” Lux says gently.

 

“You can’t fix him with me. So what he’ll forget who he is? If I stay alive, he will ALWAYS want to die everytime he sees himself. Does that sound any better to you? Wanting to fucking DIE? Because he’ll be 100% where Narcissus was with me. Stuck to his reflection and _you_ will be alone while _we_ stay together in hell _forever._ He is _cursed_ to be with me. He’ll keep coming back to hell and staring at his nonexistent mortality for all of eternity if I’m still alive. He doesn’t belong in hell with _me_ , he belongs with _you_ far away from here _.”_

 

An overwhelming question forms at Liam's lips, what Lux could feel him suppressing to acknowledge for a few days now.

 

 _“Why does he want to_ kill _himself?!?”_

 

Liam’s voice cracks but he keeps it from breaking completely.

 

_“Just ANSWER ME!”_

 

Liam knows Zayn can’t hear him no matter how loud he is.

 

He can feel him there but he’s not even close to Lux right now.

 

Liam hasn’t been totally left in the dark about everything. He was just so _oblivious_ to never noticing that Zayn was going through _hell_ at home and he needed serious help.

 

Going to parties and drinking until he was a _corpse_ and giving people free opportunities to have their way with his body. Associating with people that didn’t respect him the way he deserved _at all._ Keeping his skin covered and never telling anyone what he was thinking about. It was all _false._

 

It didn’t matter if he was secretive _._

 

Even if this lose of control and value of his life has been carried over from his last life, enabling someone and watching them do destructive things without stopping them can cost their _life_ and this has put an astronomical price on his soul and Liam’s own could just _break_ for him.

 

“Lux, _please._ ” Liam begs him to say something. “I know we can’t tell each other stuff cause it hurts but we have to talk to each other. You’re in this too.”

 

Everything pauses, except for Ari carrying them onwards. He swears they’ve passed the same unicorn shaped cloud 5 times by now.

 

“It’s not his fault Liam. I can't tell you if that's what he really wants and I can't tell you what he doesn't want you to know. But most of the darkness in Zayn is just _me_. I can tell you that if you want because that's all I know.” Lux sighs, drawing his knees up and crossing his ankles over each other as he looks down with his wrists dangling over his knees. Liam nods for him to go ahead.

 

“You wanna know something hilarious?” He smiles sideways at Liam, who grows quiet now because nothing Lux says is gonna be funny.

 

“I’ve always pretended like that painting was _real_.” He snorts a little.

 

“He was _so_ in love with me.”

 

His mocking tone glazes over his voice again, so distant, he doesn’t even sound like Zayn completely anymore. It’s too far away to distinguish. Just like in the mirror.

 

“I figured if I never met him, I’d never have to acknowledge that he hated me. Even though I thought about it constantly, wondering why he… _left_ me there.”

 

Liam watches him as he stares at the clouds in silence for a while before he says anything else. And Liam knows he’s about to tell him everything now. He knows he’s gonna tell him everything because Lux already knows he’s gonna forget every single thing he says soon anyways.

 

“Before the curse, I didn’t exist to him.” He looks at Liam now.

 

“Not as a thought or a reflection of a sin or virtue or any part of him. Because Narcissus never thought about me. Not once. He’d never cared to see or think about himself, not a day in his life because reflecting wasn’t a concept that applied to him at all. He was quite possibly the most self-less, selfish person that’s ever existed. Which seems like a huge contradiction. But it’s not. There’s a grey area in there that goes outside of anyone’s comprehension that resided beyond the clouds. He only ever cared about one thing in his life. And that wasn’t himself. He was just… in his own world of reverence. He didn’t have room to be concerned with his own life. That gives you stress wrinkles,” Lux taps lines on his forehead as his skin crease, making a grumpy face at Liam to make his forehead wrinkle, which makes Liam snort a little as Lux does so too, looking at the clouds again.

 

“That sounds… really unhealthy.” Liam murmurs.

 

“No shit.” Lux snorts. “That way of living got him _cursed._ I’ll be completely honest with you, my brothers _hated_ when he talked about Adara.They’ve always blamed her for everything that happened.”

 

Liam supposes his first meeting with Ava makes that a bit anti-climatic.

 

“Blamed me too.” He shrugs. “I mean shit, you can blame _God_ if you want. Blame death. Blame Satan. Blame the stars. Blame the fucking _sun_ for cursing Zayn if you want. Life happened the way if did and it’s brought us here.” Lux looks out at the endless clouds.

 

“What even is this life? Who knows.”

 

 _“Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham.”_ Liam finds himself murmuring. The look on Lux’s face as his eyebrows knead with his head slowly tilting back at Liam again makes Liam laugh.

 

“It’s a bollywood film I used to watch at Z’s house.”

 

“Yah… I’m aware,” Lux nods slowly as he smiles then, looking off to the side as he blows air out of his nose to snort, shaking his head at how Liam casually drops words of wisdom about life in fucking _Hindi_ without a problem yet, still can’t see that he’s wise beyond his years without anyone’s help.

 

Liam didn’t actually understand what they were saying in the movie without the subtitles but he’s watched it so many times, he didn’t even need the subtitles to follow the plot anymore.

 

In English, the title means _Sometimes there's Happiness, Sometimes there's Sorrow_ , a simple and very true fact of life _._ They’ve been getting that lesson handed to them through a canon. No particular order of what comes out. Mostly sorrow though. But there’s been some happy to.

 

Sometimes things have been nice and all feels good in the world again. Other times, it’s all been a big piece of flaming dog poo.

 

Liam used to watch a lot of Bollywood movies at Zayn’s house and listen to his weird qawwali music he put him on to, as well as an array of other genres Liam never would’ve known about without Zayn and he’d eat a lot of cultural foods his mother always cooked and go to his family’s cool parties at weddings and reunions all the time.

 

He never understood a lick of any of the languages from the movies or music but he enjoyed experiencing all that in Zayn’s house. It was part of his childhood. He supposes he’s learned a lot with Zayn too, picked up more from growing up with him than he really ever acknowledges.

 

 _“Kabhi lit, kabhi shit.”_ Lux shrugs to the side and Liam laughs now.

 

 _Sometimes lit, sometimes shit -_ same thing.

 

Right now, it really is lit. They’re all on fire.

 

A thought strikes Liam as words overlap in his mind.

 

_Blame the sun._

 

According to the Enchiridion, he was cursed for looking at the Sun. His painting was actually called, “ _Scourge of God.”._ Maybe the sun really did curse him.

 

Harry said Ra, God of the sun who fell to hell on Earth in Egypt as the morning star/Satan. But that’s not the only star that came to Earth.

 

As the thoughts find pieces that fit together… Liam begins to wonder if it was someone that Nars knew _personally_ on the surface that cursed him. He was friends with Gods afterall. Even though they make it sound like it was Adara that did this to him.

 

Liam knows Lux isn’t lying. But he doesn’t know if he believes that any of this is Adara’s fault right now as he thinks about the missing pieces of what they _know_ about the curse and what they _don’t_ know.

 

What his brothers have told Lux about Narcissus could be influenced by their personal feelings.

 

If he was _truly_ like the Zayn Liam knows and loves… then they don’t know shit about Narcissus and Adara. Liam might not know shit either but he thinks he knows more than any of them.

 

Everyone has given Liam the impression that his bond to a star was completely one-sided, as if there were these nonsensical boundary issues he disregarded for a noxious loyalty that would’ve definitely lead to depressive abandonment when he couldn’t see her anymore. Which all points to the _ultimate_ act of suicide when Nars got cursed that’s brought them to where they are today.

 

That super fucked up _“I’m nothing without you!”_ love. But that isn’t love. That’s _toxic_ attachment _._

 

Attachment is a learned behaviour. Words are learned. Sex is learned. Physical desires and physical attraction... those are mostly what we learn as ways to channel romantic affection.

 

Narcissus and Adara didn’t have any of those things to channel romantic affection.

 

Liam doesn’t think Nars was lost his own universe of reverence with her like Lux says. Reverence is deep respect imbued with awe that is typically an emotion humans only reserve for Gods. Even if she was above Narcissus, Adara wasn’t a God and he probably didn’t treat her like one.

 

They say in relationships, one always loves the other a bit more. Liam knows this wasn’t the case. She loved him just as much as he loved her. They just couldn’t be together in a conventional way.

 

She was his light. And he was her flower.

 

The symbiosis of their relationship _wasn’t_ off balance. They grew together in harmony in their own respective worlds. Sure, there’s a downside to that for Adara - she could never truly feel Nars but they still met somewhere in the middle despite the great distance. That’s a whole other league of it’s own.

 

Their entire issue was being born on opposite sides of the universe and that fucking curse. Other than that, they probably had a connection to each other that no one else could feel or ever understand but them. Because it was theirs.

 

Liam doesn’t think anyone can ever understand what motivated Narcissus to doing what he did… _whatever_ the hell he did. They don’t even know why he was really cursed. The fact of the matter is, _they don’t really know anything._

 

They weren’t there.

 

Lux is just telling Liam what _he_ was told and he really can’t fault them all for making assumptions, however wrong or biased they might be.

 

“ _Whatever_ happened,” Lux continues

 

“All of the sudden, he’s lured to the marsh and tricked into seeing a still-life of himself… a.k.a. _me_ and I become the only thing he can think about or see anymore.”

 

Lux looks down at his wrists.

 

“He saw his mortality.”

 

Liam instinctively holds onto his own wrist a bit tighter in his lap, refusing to let tears swell at the dark allusion to his mortality resting across his wrists.

 

Lux points to his wrist where Zayn’s sun is tattooed.

 

“‘ _Mementos mori’. ‘You’re mortal. Remember you have to die.’,”_

 

He lightly moves his finger across where the skin has been untouched. But on Lux’s arm underneath Zayn's skin, that’s where _his_ tattoo is wrapping all over his wrist completely, tracing ink that isn’t visible as he goes on.

 

“That’s the first half of my tattoo. Roughly translated in English, _memento mori_ literally means _“Momento of death.”_ _That_ was his reflection. A brutal reminder of mortality, forcing you to look at yourself and see that you are _nothing_ but human. So _act like it_. My mortality is literally across my wrist.”

 

That sounds like a _parent_ punishing their child, making them reflect on themselves and think about what they did wrong in the corner. His dad was a God afterall. But would he really make his child reflect on his own mortality? It’s possible.

 

There’s too many fucking possibilities now.

 

Liam learns _one_ new thing and a _thousand_ more skeletons jump out of the closet to examine closely before he even has had a chance to go through the other thousands piling up in front of him already. He wishes he could just go back in time and see it all for himself. Or even better, see what Zayn dreams about.

 

“It’s my original virtue. That reflection. Way before _Luxuria_.” He goes on, saying his name with a Latin accent for the first time to Liam.

 

His finger moves under his wrist now.  

 

“Next to that, _Cogito ergo sum._ Another reflection… not the mirror kind. My name as a thought. Luxuria comes last, right here _._ Because it is a sin and that was the last thing he had to purge for immortality. I’m not sugar spice and everything nice. I’m death, cognition and sin. I’ve got the longest fucking name in my family.” He snorts to himself as he outlines his blank wrist, writing out the words in invisible ink.

 

That’s a _very_ morbid name.

 

“And then this one, of course the one he got again. _”_ His snorts as he traces around the sun-star after he’s wrapped around his entire wrist.

 

 _“Adhara, memento nomen eius._ ‘Adara, remember her name’. A lover. _‘Epsilon Canis Majoris’._ \- where she was in her constellation. Also known as her home. In the clouds where the angels sing. That's where he wanted to be. That was _his_ full tattoo that apparently translates not only to his demons but past death too.” Lux smiles at the wonderment in Liam’s eyes.

 

He actually tatted her name, address and where she was from across his damn wrist like a map and planned on getting there one day. Liam thinks that’s beautiful stuff right there.

 

_How the hell did Adara turn into Echo?_

 

Sure it was a long time ago but… it’s like history books just take information and don’t even _bother_ with trying to keep it all accurate.

 

“All my brothers got that one as well and they all hate it. Adara isn’t a well liked name around here in hell for _anyone_ . Demons don’t get on with beings from those planes because they’re actually the most powerful beings _half_ a step below Gods. Like stars and angels. She existed before way Narcissus and her life is even more unknown than his. Most beings from Earth and and hell _wouldn’t_ know anything about those kinds of beings. Because they stay beyond the sky far away from here.”

 

“So… star people don’t really exist.”

 

“No. Stars are stars and people are people. But you have a _soft_ body in between many planes and I’ve never heard of a human with your kind of body so who the fuck knows.”

 

“Can a star be a demon?” Liam is actually talking about the “morning star” here. Lux purses his lips a little as he frowns to the side for a few seconds. He thinks about it all over his face before he just shrugs.

 

“Yeah, I don’t know.” He says simply as he looks at Liam again.

 

“I’m not omnipotent. I don’t know everything.”

 

He seems like he does.

 

“All I know is, the only older demon I know that wouldn’t actually drain a _human_ is G. He actually studies and explores other species so he’s probably more fascinated by a human like you rather than disgusted. But just because he wouldn’t drain you doesn’t mean he wouldn’t _kill_ you. He isn’t as harmless as he seems. He’d be more likely to disembowel you and study the inside of your body. That’s why Zayn doesn’t want you around them any more than you have to be. And I don’t either. They’re in love with _Zayn._ Not you.”

 

What a _lovely_ revelation. Lux isn’t like them though. He’s never been in love with Zayn cause he’d never met him. But when he did, he also met Liam that same night.

 

Liam supposes all his friends _would_ hate him. Every fucking person in hell that couldn’t keep Narcissus cause he was too busy trying to break into heaven.

 

Liam is the reason they can’t have Zayn all to themselves. Lux is seemingly the reason he left as fast as he did. Lux and Liam are standing in the way of Zayn and… well everyone else who wants him. Whether it’s to be his lover or his friend… or whatever reason seemingly everyone and their damn uncle is always after Zayn.

 

His unease with Remy telling him he has a suspicion that Ace wants Zayn to stay longer grows stronger in the like that something feels awfully wrong about what’s going on behind closed doors.

 

_Why would Ace want to help save someone that lives on he surface if he doesn’t want Zayn to leave?_

 

Clearly he has no regard to his own brother’s life at all. Probably not Liam’s either, especially seeing that he’s human. Liam decides this whole thing _seems_ fishy because it _is_ fishy. Nothing about this isn’t sitting right and he thinks he’s starting to find a possibility for _why_.

 

“Ace would do anything for Zayn.” Lux sighs. “Of course he had personal feelings about Adara too but he wouldn’t let the person that Zayn loves get tortured in hell.”

 

For some reason… that doesn’t really assure Liam of anything. Ace doesn’t care about Liam or Lux. All he cares about is Zayn. With Liam _and_ Lux out of the picture, Zayn would never leave again. Ace is the one making Lux kill himself which is the solution according to _him_ . Maybe that won’t achieve the end goal the way they _think_ it will.

 

Lux must sense Liam’s growing discomfort.

 

“Acedia’s virtue was _charity_ Liam. He’s a very gratuitous demon. He’s not _perfect…_ or very friendly but that’s only because he’s a cranky old fart. But he’s not evil. You don’t have to worry about Ace. He’s _helping_ you for Zayn.” Lux tries to reassure Liam of his brother’s character. Liam can’t really judge someone he’s never met but… that assurance really doesn’t help shit.

 

A month ago, Liam wouldn’t second guess that at all. Gratuitous in that context means he’ll go out of his way to offer his help to someone without expecting anything in return just because he can. But Ace came from _Zayn’s_ virtue… and Zayn’s not a very generous person.

 

Gratuitous out of that context has a sinister double meaning that Liam is also fully aware of. It could mean going out of the way for something senseless. Like gratuitous violence - violence just for the sake of violence. Doing something uncalled for with no reason or motive at all. Like those sociopaths who go around shooting people in public just because they own a gun and _can_.

 

Being gratuitous is open to anything and when a demon is involved, especially one that is very _old_ , anything includes very bad things as well. Mostly bad things. Most probably only bad things with the way his demons seem manifest.

 

Zayn has never had a problem with being _a bit_ violent. His other demons seem to have a sick twist to his personality. Even with _Lux,_ getting mortality like that on his wrist. Even G got a sick twist for his quest for knowledge. It’s not hard to guess what Ace’s twist on _gratuitous_ would be.

 

Even if he doesn’t talk to him about this stuff or tell him what he’s doing here, Liam trusts that Zayn knows what he’s doing here and isn’t blindly taking in everything his demons advise him to do.

 

Even thinking that sentence out loud sounds fucking stupid. Why would he listen to his laziness?

 

“We were all virtues before we were sins.” Lux resumes the topic.

 

“His virtue, where we came from in him, his sin and his lover. That’s what our names represent. So _my_ full birthmark is _Mementos mori - Cogito ergo sum - Luxuria - Adhara, memento nomen eius - Epsilon Canis Majoris.”_ He counts them on his fingers but he runs out of fingers to count on.

 

“That’s a real mouthful and it translates to _nothing_ coherent _._ Since part of my name is literally, _I Think I Am Luxuria,_ you can call me Lux. _”_

 

A question _and_ a statement.

 

“Rhymes with lust.” They both say at the same time.

 

“Sort of.” Lux smiles after he finishes, folding his hands over his knees again so they dangle lazily.

 

“His reflection was his momento. Reflecting on the shortness of his life, the certainty of his own _death,_ and the stillness of time, which basically means he needed to be reminded that he wasn’t going to live forever and at the rate he was going... he was going to die very _quickly._ And _voila,_ we’ve got a first ever in history _vanity_ . _”_ Lux does jazz hands with a small smile.

 

“So he purged his momento because he… _didn’t_ want to die?”

 

Lux sits up and leans over Liam to tap Ari’s shoulder, beckoning for his water-filled hat.

 

“No.” He sighs, as he looks into it. “I don’t know _why_ he went through the marsh. He didn’t purge his momento. He changed it into a sin. _I_ personally think he just maybe found a loophole into getting out of lusting for his own image. Leave it all in hell.”

 

“You think he went through the marsh on purpose?” Liam tilts his head. Harry thinks that too. Lux only taps the brim of Ari’s hat, shaking his head to the side with a flat mouth.

 

“I dunno.” He sighs. “I really can’t figure out what his thought process was in everything he did. He didn’t talk about Adara that much but… I’ve met him now and I see that shit he _thought_ about back then and everything he was doing seems to have had an obvious motive now. When he left hell out of the blue like that it wasn’t totally shocking because that’s the kind of person he is. He rarely ever says what he’s really thinking about. He didn’t express a tonne of concern for others explicitly and that comes off as unbothered and self-absorbed which is _probably_ why he has a very bad habit of not telling you things he should. It’s not that he doesn’t _care,_ everything is just a fucking secret with him. It’s _always_ been that way, people said he was like that way before the curse. Kept to himself. He wrote poetry, laid around in his flowers, and stared at the sky. He doesn’t give a fuck about anything but _you,_ Liam. Nothing about him has changed at all because all the reflecting didn’t make help him learn his lesson. His mentality is the same. That mentality makes him do stupid, destructive things. Like sell off parts of his own _soul_ for a fucking star. Maybe that seemed like a good idea to him at the time but all it’s done is made more trouble for everyone he’s ever come into contact with.”

 

Liam can’t imagine _any_ of Zayn’s demons being very fond of Adara. He literally sold them to death, in _hell_. How could they ever like Liam?

 

“Did you hate Adara too?” Liam finds himself asking.

 

With the way he was with Liam before, avoiding him and blowing him off, it’s obvious he didn’t like Liam if that’s who he realised he was. Especially after talking about his smell which Liam really wanted to apologise for.

 

People say what they’re really feeling when they’re angry. Lux probably blamed the infamous lover for all their problems too. _Liam_ has been blaming himself for all this for a while now. Not in a past life. In _this_ life.

 

He totally agrees with Louis.

 

Even if it’s not _totally_ his fault… when it all boils down completely, it still feels like his fault because whatever they wanted with Liam, they gave it all to Zayn. It kills him inside thinking about _one_ thing he could’ve done differently at the party that would’ve changed everything.

 

Not said anything at all to High Tide. Refuse to let Zayn leave with them. And the biggest regret of all, _ever_ leaving Zayn when he took his chance with Liam and staying when he asked him too. Even going back even further, not settling for Sophia the teenaged witch last year since this seems to have been in the making for a few years.

 

Maybe not even going to the party at all.

 

It doesn’t matter what Zayn’s destiny was. If all that was supposed to happen, then that means this was all destined to be Liam’s fault and he probably wouldn’t ever be cursed if he didn’t know him.

 

Lux looks up quickly, shaking his head.

 

“No, Liam I’ve never hated that star… or you.” He says earnestly. “I told you a million times, I like you.”

 

“You seem like you hated me.”

 

“No I--” Lux squeezes his eyes closed as he groans.

 

“I’ve never blamed _you_ for what happened.” He says seriously as he looks at him again.

 

“I just wondered what the fuck was so great about something that he couldn’t even _talk_ to.” Lux admits, rubbing over his eyes in frustration.

 

“I’ll admit sometimes when I look at you, I see things that… fucking _terrify_ me now. And maybe I wish I could just turn you back into a stranger so I won’t feel this anymore.” He presses into his churning tummy as his emotions swirls.

 

Liam gets him. Feelings are painful. Emotions can be _exhausting._ Liam usually just called his a day and spaced out to skip the bullshit. But spacing out doesn’t solve anything. It’s still there when you come back.

 

“That doesn’t mean I hate you. I’ll _never_ hate you, okay? I like looking at you when you’re awake and trying not to fall asleep and hearing your voice drag your words together when you _falling_ asleep. I’m never _not_ gonna like you… but I’m _sick_ of being stuck in this fucking body as the fucking liaison between you, talking through him. I’m not in a relationship with you--”

 

Liam stops him from leaving, realising _that’s_ why he made him get the water from the marsh.

 

“Lux,” Liam holds his arm while Lux closes his eyes.

 

He’s gonna talk to Zayn later. A really really _long_ talk. But he needs to talk to Lux too because this isn’t about just Zayn or Liam. It’s about Lux too. They’ve all been here one way or another, _together,_ throughout this entire thing.

 

He sees that Lux has a problem with getting close to people and putting labels on it. He gets that he’s not a serious relationship kind of guy if they’re not just hooking up and that’s not what Liam is asking of him at all.

 

He still doesn’t know what the hell they are either but they can figure this out without running away from each other or ignoring one another or fighting through emotional strife without communicating it in silence.

 

They have a lot of time here right now so all these miscommunications are stopping now so they can have a long, honest conversation where they can both see each other.

 

He’s told Liam this much, he might as well finish.

 

Ari’s legs and feet seem to land on something in the air as he crawls, stopped now after flying around in circles, looking back at Liam and Lux.

 

“Alright. Get the hell off me and go eat. You are both making me _gag_.”

 

Lux’s head tilts for a second before he gives Ari two middle fingers behind his head with bitten lips, which makes Liam snort a little as he looks around them.

 

They’re in the middle of what looks like nowhere, above a bed of pretty pink, fluffy clouds that flash on occasion from the storm below them.

 

Lux stands up and turns the hat over, pouring it out and fling it out of his hands so it floats on a cloud.

 

Above them isn’t the sky but _water._ Like they’re in an upside down world where the ground is made of thunder clouds and the sky is made of rivers, flowing around in the sky.

 

The diffused light from the sun streaming through the marsh pours sheets of golden light over the clouds from above, gloaming like this place is where sunsets, twilights, dusks and dawns are made before being released up to Earth’s surface every morning and every evening.

 

Pieces of flower petals from the marsh are raining down like a shower of butterflies from the sky, fluttering around sparsely through the space as it rains in all their favourite colours. And it’s the most visual state of reverie Liam has ever seen. Like he can step right into it and instantly be lost in sweven and wonder.

 

Lux will be able to leave whenever he wants up here.

 

After he stands up, he sticks out his hand behind him for Liam to take as he steps right on the clouds, his feet sinking just a little as he walks across as easy as walking over a pillow.

 

Liam holds his hand as he steps over Ari’s wing, careful when Lux tells him to watch his steps in the air so he doesn’t step in an empty space where he cloud parts.

 

Liam’s stomach lurks when he sees through the clouds, how _high_ up this is the the sky.

 

 _“Hey,”_ Lux jerks his hand up. _“Look at me.”_

 

Liam watches Lux now as holds his warm gaze, nodding for Liam to move forward.

 

“You won’t fall.”

 

“It’s a _cloud.”_

 

“I _promise_ you won’t fall. You’re lighter on your feet than you know. Just walk with me.”

 

Liam doesn’t move.

 

“I will do a pirouette for you across the damn _sky_ if you really need proof that we can walk through clouds Liam.”

 

Liam laughs as he let’s Lux pull him forward, if only to actually see him actually do it.

 

Just like he promised, the clouds hold him up buoyantly, floating without any effort at all.

 

He looks back at Ari as Lux pulls him along to find his head ducking through the clouds like an ostrich now, eating through it. His wings are wrapped around his body like a fluffy vest. Liam supposes he must usually keep them under his shirt like before.

 

Ahead of him, Lux lets go as he breaks into a run across the sky at normal speed through the falling flower petals before he does his pirouette on his heel, also as promised, spinning on a cloud like a ballerina across a stage. Liam laughs when he floats back on a cloud with a small sigh, swaying back and forth in the air.

 

“See?” He cheeses. “Clouds are your friends _._ You _must_ know that by now.”

 

He nods as he sits quietly next to Lux on their warm, plush quilt with his legs crossed astute over each other.

 

The flowers are so wet from the marsh, some of them stick to their skin and slide off like actual rain drops as Liam blinks up at the sky, getting the flowers in his eyelashes.

 

Lux said flowers didn’t grow from the ground in hell. But he didn’t say the sky above the storm _sprayed_ them. He made it sound like the _stink._ They smell better than roses. These are Zayn’s flowers.

 

So he thinks Zayn's stinks. Clever.

 

“Where are we?” Liam murmurs up at the marsh. He feels like he’s gonna turn into a real field of flowers if he sits still enough.

 

“My _locus amoenus.”_

 

“Means?”

 

“Pleasant place.” Lux smiles.

 

“Landscape of the mind. They say that poet, Dante, used to come up here all the time to describe his earthly paradises. Harry has probably told you about it.”  

 

“Oh yeah…” Liam nods slowly as he takes it all in. Harry has mentioned something about a place where romantic encounters take place outside of Dante’s inferno. So… this is _above_ hell.

 

Dante’s description was, _‘Spring is endless, here all fruits are.’_

 

And Liam is actually… _here._

 

It seems more like the sunsets and flowers are endless, actually. Maybe further down, he’ll find a place full of spring and fruit too. But he likes where they are.

 

“The Gods and Goddesses of love and beauty, like Venus and Adonis, make places like these all over, above Lust and below Earth.”

 

“Venus?” Liam murmurs, flashing back to the fountain that gave him his cold flowers to breathe in.

 

“That’s her Roman name. You might know her better as Aphrodite in Greek. They spent most their shared time together in these spaces and baths so Adonis could easily visit Persephone in the underworld down below. It’s very vast. Spans all over Lust.”

 

Liam knows that Persephone is supposed the _Queen_ of the underworld and the fact that Lux personally knows these Gods is… incredibly intimidating.

 

Hearing Lux talk about Adonis with Liam even though he’s aware that Liam knows he has a relationship with him feels really unsheltered. Unlike before, he’s actually being completely honest with Liam now.

 

“Currently, we’re underneath the marsh, which stretches out for only a few miles. Flower dust from the narcissus in the water collects here.” He says as he reaches into a cloud below him, which glows red when he digs into it before bringing his flaming hand back up.

 

“I come up here to think about… life.” He sighs.

 

“Really?”

 

The golden flame drips off his hand like molten honey when he eats it,letting it trickle out of his nose, stripped of it’s colour and texture, coming out transparent. It doesn’t smoke but Liam knows it’s _hot_. He wouldn’t be able to see it if his sight wasn’t on level 1,000.

 

Aether looks delicious but… he imagines it’s the equivalent to eating lava so he’s gonna pass on having a taste.

 

“No, not really. I _hate_ philosophy. I’m not profound like that. How corny would that be?” Lux snorts.

 

“I usually come up here to _fuck_.”

 

Liam’s body freezes up a little before he swallows. Lux pauses too, he looking over at him with quirked brows.

 

“What?”

 

“You’re not gonna like…”

 

“Seduce you?” His mouth curls at the corners slightly, perching in an airless smirk as he narrows his eyes.

 

“What? You’re not attracted to me?”

 

Liam doesn't say the obvious that’s he’s been ignoring all day like he used to… well like he used to the last 10+ years of his life which makes Lux’s face fall as he rolls his eyes.

 

“Oh my God, _relax._ I’m kidding _.”_ He groans. “Not gonna lie, it obviously crossed my mind since that’s all anyone ever does here but I didn’t bring you here to fuck you, you can calm you tits. This is the roof of our house.”

 

Liam thumbs at the cloud.

 

_Our house._

 

He beams as he looks down, bouncing his fingers on the cloud, continuing to stay wordless.

 

“Ari’s not really wrong… I’m kind of a bitch when I’m hungry so sorry about today. I’m usually less of a bitch.” He says as he licks his lips, digging deeper into the cloud.

 

 _“Not really…”_ Liam murmurs, getting a lump of dusty clouds thrown in his face in response, making him laugh as he brushes it away. It’s like suds.

 

The roof of the house is in the empty space right before you get to the marsh. Only it’s not empty. It’s full of dust and pollen.

 

Aether must sleep above the clouds in these pleasant places like a mist above the grass of a lawn in the mornings. It seems to function like a nebula in outer space - misty haze around, full of matter to take up the space between space.

 

Liam inhales the flaming non-air far into him and it tickles his nose pleasantly. This place really lives up to the name.

 

There’s no flavour but that of the hellfire in comes from in its aftertaste and the sunbeams touching everything in sight, all over their skin. It makes him wonder what heaven tastes like if this is what the upper belts of the underworld is. He feels like he _belongs_ here.

 

Above blushing clouds and breathing sunlight.

 

“Everyone says you don’t like aether.” Liam says as he watches him eat it off his hand, _slowly_ sucking on each one of his fingers in a very sexual manner that Liam isn’t sure actually looks sexual or his brain is just in the gutter. He stops watching him eat as his eyes go up towards the marsh again when Lux looks up.

 

“Liam, I’m not gonna fucking _shoot up_ in front of you. I’m not _that_ gratuitous enough to actually traumatise you. _”_ He shakes his head with a grimace as palms at it in his hands.

 

No… Lux isn’t like that at all. Not anymore than Zayn is.

 

Sure he’s dirty and has got a really fucked up sense of humour but there’s certain things he doesn’t say or do around Liam or tones down when he sees Liam is scared. Like he’s preserving some part of the image Liam has of him or Zayn even though it’s totally pointless because he already knows anyways and what the hell could be worse than watching them eat someone’s _soul?_ But whatever.

 

It would be awkward to watch him writhe around in agony after injecting fire into his veins so Liam supposes that’s a good call to spare them both the intensity of that.

 

He _is_ genuinely relieved to see Lux eating though. Not just because that means he’s not planning on going to get one off with someone… okay maybe that is a little bit of why it’s such a relief. But mostly because he’s safe now from the beast version of him. Even if he clearly doesn’t like it as he holds his stomach and gags a little, which makes Liam snort. He really is a diva. But he’s in a much better mood now at least. He doesn’t look like he’s very nervous or nauseous anymore.

 

He swallows enough that visibly helps his health a bit, the slightly sunken cheeks that were beginning to cave more today filling out into his cheekbones again after he’s finally sated. But his heart still isn’t that strong. Eating it raw isn’t gonna have the full effect of ripping into a nice set of juicy guts but it’ll work for him until the full moon.

 

Liam’s eyes wander again so he doesn’t stare at Lux puckering his lips around his fingers as he continues sucking off sticky substances off his fucking hands. While Liam busies his eyes with taking in the scenery, Lux looks at him with a sly smirk, wondering how long can he keep up fucking with him until he notices.

 

Liam experimentally reaches into his own cloud. It feels like nothing up here compared to the ones further down. But they somehow hold their weight even though neither of them are floating right now as they sit here. And Liam had to spend 2 terms in physics _._

 

What a waste of time.

 

He seriously couldn’t wait for Harry to flip out when he tells him what he did today.

 

He takes a few pictures of the scenery to send to him on his phone while Lux eats.

 

He’s supposed to be gone with Harry way before Halloween so they won’t risk anything happening. Speaking of Harry, he’s just noticing he’s got a few text messages from him that are in the double digits right now and lot of missed calls. He gets the feeling it’s more stuff about his dad that Sophia must have on her computer for some fucked up reason and Liam is _not_ in the mood for that. He’ll call later.

 

One troubling fluster of _shit_ at a time.

 

“I existed over 1,000 years ago but I wasn’t alive yet.” Lux continues on while Liam plays with his cloud and collects flower petals into little piles and leans down to get a really artsy photo.

 

“I didn’t have a name or face or anything I look like right now. Scattered, inanimate pieces of Nars. Existing and being alive are different things. Ergo my name and age is much more complicated than “how many years ago were you created?”. It depends on who’s clock are you looking at and which make we’re talking about. I’ve been _animated_ for probably 18 years but I’ve existed for as long as Zayn has. In every _human_ life.”

 

“Human life?” Liam repeats.

 

“Well… sometimes you aren’t human in your past.” Lux further explains and Liam nods in understanding now.

 

“Your past life could’ve been a butterfly. Short life but… still _life_.”

 

Or maybe a shooting star. That’s a pretty fleeting occurrence to. Any kind of life, even one as evanescent as passing by your reflection in a mirror, is still a life. Everyone should be allowed to choose what they want to do with it.

 

“If he was, say a _moon_ in a past life, I most probably didn't exist at all. I came from part of his _humanity.”_

 

“That's _wicked,”_ Liam murmurs to himself, which makes Lux laugh at his constant state of amazement.

 

He looks up at Lux again and Lux swallows when he pauses for a moment, looking at him strangely.

 

“What?”

 

“So you _are_ 17.”

 

Lux rolls his eyes now, looking away from Liam.

 

“I _look_ 17.”

 

 _“You’re 17.”_ Liam snorts quietly, going back to his piles of dust now.

 

“It’s not that _simple_ Liam.” Lux insists, annoyed with repeating himself.

 

“That’s just how old Narcissus was when he met me and that’s how old he still looked 1,000 years later when he got rid of me. I was with him his entire life. He’s just never _made it_ past 17.”

 

“Then why do you always say you don’t exist?”

 

“I’ve never said I don’t exist. I said Zayn exists. Obviously.” Lux destroys his neat pile of flowers as he blows on it _ruining_ Liam’s shot.

 

He flinches when Liam hits him in his chest, then laughs, grabbing Liam’s hand that he snatches away as he scoots further away from Lux, turning his back to him so he can restart safely away from Lux’s destruction.

 

“You said just because you don’t think about something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

 

There’s a small pause as Lux’s eyes go down Liam’s back as Liam bends forward. The slither of his spine is starting to peek through his shirt from how it’s starting to stick to his skin and slide behind him from all the moisture around them. He swallows a thick lump in his throat as his pulse thumps, loud in his ears.

 

As Liam finally gets a really nice pile, his cloud he’s sitting on suddenly parts as it’s pulled out from underneath him, feeling it slide out from under him as Lux pulls him closer, so they all fall through this time.

 

 _“Stop ruining it!”_ Liam laughs, throwing them at him. He doesn’t even dodge it, letting himself get trashed with petals.

 

“I did say that.” He nods with his eyes closed, blowing some off his lips after they’ve settled all over his face.

 

“And I also said _thinking_ about something doesn’t mean it exists either. Zayn without a doubt exist. But I can exist with him. And I can _not_ exist to him. The fundamentals of a reality that appears to exist on one plane and not exist on another don’t apply to me. Because I am a balance of both. Ontology is confusing innit?” He smiles with his eyes closed.

 

“Onthology?”

 

“The nature of being.” Lux elaborates with his close eyes. Liam leans down close for a moment as he watches the dust piling up on his face, over his cheeks and nose… and his lips.

 

[ (St. Vincent - The Strangers) ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uTAk58YJXI)

 

 _“Being what?”_ He asks him as he picks some off of his mouth.

 

“Being whatever the fuck you are Liam!” Lux shouts as he springs up suddenly, throwing petals on Liam who tries to shield himself as he laughs when Lux starts a barrage of assault when Liam doesn’t retaliate, grabbing handfuls of dust and throwing it over and over so fast, his arms start to blur in motion.

 

“Fuck labels, we are _nothing in nowhere!_ Nothing matters up here. You can be whatever the hell you want to be, you can be a flower like Zayn if you want.”

 

Liam finally deflects all of it with his mind and gains his own flower army, gathering his piles in his arms and having at it at the same speed but he can’t overpower Lux as easily as he can Zayn.

 

They get into a brief war of throwing flower dust at each other’s faces like they’re having a snowball fight, blinding each other as they both end up going for the eyes, slugging chunks of it at each other as hard as they can in the most aggressive frolicking-in-flowers session ever.

 

“I think we should come up here all the time.” Liam manages to laugh as it gets in his mouth, spitting it out.

 

It tastes so _sweet_ . Sugary water, like _Zayn._ He briefly wonders if daffodils were named after Narcissus or if he was named after daffodils. He’s thinking they were named after him. Narcissus got his name from a river God. Maybe that river was full of sugar or rose water.

 

“I think you’re right.” Lux jumps on his and stuffs it in his mouth, laughing as he spazzes and falls into himself on top of Liam when Liam squeezes his waist he’s left open - where his greatest funny bone hides. He doesn’t know Zayn’s body as well as Liam does.

 

“ _Oh my God STOP I do NOT like being… tickled!”_

 

 _“That’s unfortunate.”_ Liam smiles until his head pops back up over Liam’s, hiccuping on his laugh with his eyes squeezed shut, _clearly_ lying about not liking this. His hiccups hem in the non-existent space between them.

 

Liam’s hands stutter as his eyes widen. He’s _never_ heard Zayn’s voice do that before and he realises this is Lux’s actual laugh.

 

It triggers a strange memory inside and he realises he’s heard this laugh before. In Narcissus.

 


	12. Demons : Zayn

 

 

 

Okay it's not actually _Narcissus_.

 

Liam has no way of really knowing if that's how he laughed but... he knows he's heard it before, and not from Zayn. That weird deja vu that always hits him with Lux.

 

It’s so light in the way it catches in his throat without rasping.

 

As Liam actually gets mesmerised, he stops tickling him then and Lux blinks down at him with a wide grin. The lack of movement they always seem to come to holds for a few seconds before Liam finally knees Lux off him as he blinks up at the sky now, almost in a daze.

 

Liam is a human being. There’s only so many surreal breaks in reality he can take at a time with Lux right now. That _may_ have been the biggest reminder he’s had today that he really is separate from Zayn but actually… _not_.

 

Liam just heard his real voice clearly. Which means he _does_ have a voice but for some reason, most people can’t hear it. But Liam just did.

 

Even though he doesn’t laugh like Zayn, he still sounds _exactly_ like him and the surreal realisation makes him think of when he was able to somehow see Lux’s face in the mirror when he shouldn’t have. Because he does have a face. Why no one else can see anything but his illusions in the mirror but Liam apparently is tripping him out. He thinks he’s slowly starting to understand what clearly no one else does. Lux isn’t really an illusion.

 

“What’s wrong?” Lux’s voice cuts off his brief zone out as Liam looks over at him, shaking his head.

 

“... nothing.” Liam murmurs, smiling a little. Lux narrows his eyes at him suspiciously before simply shrugging instead of asking why the weird look.

 

Lux falls on his back in exhaustion. Even that little break has worn him out. They’re both _soaking_ wet now, patches of colourful merriment replacing what was once a layer of skin.

 

Liam shakes out his dusty arms with a wide grin now as he looks down at his garnished body. He likes wearing these flowers.

 

He gets comfortable too, leaning on his belly next to him while Lux lies on his back, side-by-side to tell Liam about what he was to his human before he became his demon.

 

No, Liam still doesn’t totally understand philosophy or existence or the purpose of life and all that crap and he really doesn’t care to. But he cares about Lux and that’s his life. So he’ll listen to him talk about it for as long as he hears his voice.

 

“Humanity is very complex. You obviously aren’t just made up of _sins_. There’s personalities, humours, temperaments, virtues, emotions, thoughts… etcetera. Those are all non-physical things in you. And physical things too. 78 internal organs, including the largest organ that is your malleable skin which makes up about 15 or 16 percent of you. 2 million working parts of your eyes, including if you’re blind. 206 very hard bones which is about 15 percent of your mass. 32 teeth--”

 

 _“30 percent of me is skin and bone?”_ Liam mutters as he runs his tongue over his teeth in the front as he counts them while Lux is talking.

 

The knowledge of how much he knows about the human body despite not having one is almost disturbing. They probably learn anatomy of humans so they know exactly where to drain them.

 

He squints at Liam, laughing at his strange face as he counts his teeth.

 

“They’re all there.” He assures him with a helpful nod, which makes Liam laugh.

 

Lux thinks for a moment before he continues.

 

“I reckon like… 75 percent of _you_ is probably made of liquid sunsets, stardust and clouds, sunshine.”

 

Liam snorts as he shakes his head a little.

 

“I _don’t_ think that’s physically possible… what about the other 25?”

 

“The _hardest_ thing on on your body…” His voice dips low into a suggestive tone.

 

Liam’s face sets on fire.

 

“Your _teeth_.” Lux cheeses. Liam rolls his eyes at him, putting his head down in his arms.

 

“Not gonna lie, your friend is _massive_ and I definitely wouldn’t you using my face as your favourite bike. But taking up 25% of your body might look a bit strange....” He ends up adding his unabashed sexual desires anyways.

 

Liam shakes his head in absolute _repulse_ at the mental image of the last bit.

 

“You are _disgusting.”_

 

“ _You’re_ calling _me_ disgusting? As if you weren’t the lifting up your leg higher this morning so you could get licked lower.” Lux snorts at the sky, biting down on his lip.

 

“You’re not as innocent as you think you are, darling. You smelled _delicious_ today. Ari would’ve slaughtered you if I hadn’t _happened_ to have told him all about you 3 months ago.”

 

Lux looks down at Liam covering the bottom half of his face after he takes a minute to realise what his “massive friend” is and what “using his face as a bike” means as he almost chokes on his breath. Lux laughs, winking at him with a cheeky grin before he relaxes again, closing his eyes.

 

Liam can’t even form rational thoughts. They all just _says_ things, oh so fucking casually with a smirk and a wink and then moves on like the topic has not gone double _x-rated_.

 

Being with Lux face to face was serious _torture._ But he’s not making any real moves to acting on anything he says so Liam will take his torture and live with it. This _is_ a very weird relationship but he’s determined to keep it together _._

 

“There are seven contrary virtues with seven deadly sins to match.” Lux goes on with the _other_ parts of the human body.

 

“Four majour temperaments with 4 bodily humours to match, which is your personality. They all exist in you somewhere. Some of them are physical, some aren’t. Narcissus obviously gave up all of his sins, which aren’t physical. But he had to fuse those emotions with other parts of his body as a sacrifice for each sin. We were virtues before we were sins. We got all his sins, virtues, and humours.”

 

“Which ones are you?”

 

Lux’s eyes go upwards as he thinks, like he’s trying to remember what parts of Nars he started as even though it’s literally been tattooed on his arm.

 

“You know this is supposed to be the easiest question to answer.”

 

Lux knees Liam’s behind as Liam laughs.

 

“Okay little smart-ass, I haven’t had a reason to dwell on this in years so excuse me for _trying_ to give you a right answer your _lusting_ so fucking hard after.”

 

Liam smiles into his elbows after Lux rolls his eyes at him in annoyance with his pushiness.

 

“Nars’ dominant humour was black bile… which is me. That’s a personality that’s dominant, cold and dry. Also known as melancholic temperament. Which is analytical, wise, and quiet in traits. Those types of people usually come off as unfriendly and cold-hearted or mean to others. Or even deeply sad. My sister always told me he had an addictive, provocative personality that made him intoxicating to be around. Like a shot of liquor. Everyone said he had a God complex so becoming immortal was the easiest thing in the world to him unlike what it should’ve been like for anyone else. It seemed like as far as he was concerned, he was already born that way anyways. It was supposedly hard not to go along with whatever he wanted or said. So he always had a lot of friends wherever he was. But when he wanted to be alone, he was like a ghost. I am _full_ of black bile so if you wanna blame my aloof ego and attitude on someone, you can blame Zayn cause that’s where it comes from.”

 

Narcissus definitely _sounds_ like an asshole. He might as well be reading off Zayn’s horoscope if he came along with a manuscript on his birth chart.

 

 _“Memento mori_ was obviously a reflection that teaches the virtue of abstinence, to abstain from self-indulgent luxury - where I _originally_ started. Reminding a foolish child who he was. A _mortal_ . Nars takes that lesson in vain, comes to hell and turns that virtue into a sin, that emotion turns into kakos when purged _into_ that reflection, _out_ comes his demon. Alive now.”

 

 _You._ Liam thinks to himself. That’s quite a journey through Zayn’s body.

 

“As you can imagine, removing all that shit probably left him feeling a little more empty than what should be considered normal _._ Especially when he looks at his reflection again and finds nothing actually there but false images of himself. Feels nothing inside but an empty heart. Feel nothing on his skin. And so on. Generally, abstinence can apply to anything. Sex. Eating meat. Going out to party. Watching TV. Drinking alcohol. Looking in the mirror. Any other selfish luxury or sin. Anything at all you stop indulging in for a long period of time is abstinence. He got rid of it with me so, his attempt to get away from me was extremely contradictory. Throwing away abstinence means you _can’t_ abstain from your fucking luxury. Even if he wasn’t actually stuck like before, he still couldn’t abstain from mirrors, looking for something that wasn’t there anymore.”

 

“He’s been looking for _you.”_ Liam says aloud this time. Lux shrugs.

 

“Doesn’t matter. I think it’s safe to assume that all that time Narcissus spent dealing with me - if you _really_ think about how much time 1,000 years amounts to in hell - is probably why Ira was born the way he was from his heart and why Zayn can’t stand looking at his face in this life, as if he _ever_ did anyways… even before Nars got cursed. So all in all, I got his dominantly melancholic personality slash temperament, and black humour and I can still abstain to a certain degree but I don’t have any actual virtues left. Obviously. The only one that still does is G. He was chastity _._ Since he was born asexual, he’ll most likely keep his virginity and stay chaste forever.”

 

 _Melancholy boy._ Liam thinks.

 

Pensive sadness with no particular cause. Almost like… depression.

 

Before all this, Liam never would’ve associated depression with Zayn. Now, he’d be shocked if he wasn’t eligible to be clinically diagnosed with it at birth. Even if his internal issues have been really supernatural, his mental health had to have been suffering because of it too.

 

He was always so _popular_ and surrounded by his friends. Always with that charming smile on his face. But that doesn’t mean he was happy. Maybe not even just sad either. _Pensive_ sadness is different from your typical “ _just having a bad day”_ sad. It’s vague, longing for something that you think about and maybe find yourself in random deep thought constantly as a result. No apparent reason or cause. Just… _there_ somewhere, wistfully waiting.  

 

Even if he seemed like he was happy when he was with Liam. They weren’t together every second of their lives. Zayn’s never really said anything to Liam about being unhappy with himself. In fact, it’s always been the complete opposite. When he first told Liam about the curse the day of Jade’s funeral, it was really _surprising_ to hear the notion of Zayn _not_ being… vain. Not the definition Liam was used to that is. He had no idea what Zayn was going through inside behind the scenes of his life.

 

It’s insane to think that you never really know how anyone feels or what they’re going through no matter how close you are. He’d been carrying all this darkness around with him like this in secret. Liam can’t really blame or fault him for putting up a front and not wanting to talk about it anymore.

 

Black bile isn’t exactly bad or good. It’s just… _there_ . It’s Lux. He literally _pukes_ black bile when he’s sick.

 

Physically, it’s a steaming pile of hot _garbage_ . That’s definitely _not_ Lux. He’s not physical. Sometimes, Liam isn’t either.

 

He also can’t have a virtue.

 

As Liam reflects now, he realises there are things Lux really can’t be despite his infinite paradox. Like a virgin. And if that’s possible, then _anything_ is possible. Especially him staying alive and being free of the curse just like Zayn.

 

Also as he reflects… Liam starts to wonder when Lux lost _his_ virtue. He told Liam something about how _amazing_ it was a while ago.

 

Lux smirks at him after their long pause.

 

“Y’know something?”

 

Liam’s brows raise as he looks at Lux.

 

“You're _really_ nosy.”

 

Liam keeps forgetting that he knows everything he wants to know.

 

“So, when’d you lose it?” Liam figures he might as well ask.

 

Lux grins at the water, keeping his mouth closed.

 

“Was it…” Liam almost says Adonis but he stops when Lux turns his smiling eyes at him, making Liam look at his folded elbow nervously. He doesn’t actually want to know the story behind him and Adonis to be honest.

 

“Was it with Xhane?” He says instead.

 

Lux looks back up again, shaking his head with a toothless smile.

 

“Do I… know them?”

 

“Yeah… probably.” Lux nods.

 

“Who? Give a hint.”

 

“You wouldn’t believe me.”

 

Liam squints one eye at him for a moment.

 

“If you don’t lie, I’ll believe you.”

 

Lux shakes his head with his stupid, cute smirk.

 

“Oh come on! You know _everything_ about how I lost mine, that isn’t fair!”

 

“Tough shit. Nothing’s “fair” in life, mate. Get used to it.”

 

The way Lux talks when he’s being short is so _irritating._ He pricks right under your skin and it makes Liam not want to say _anything_ to him anymore, which is probably the goal.

 

Liam twists his head away as he lays it in his arms, rolling his eyes. Lux bites his lip in as his ankle bounces in annoyance. He doesn’t like Liam turning away from him anymore than Liam does.

 

“It was with my friend and his girlfriend on Valentine's day a very long time ago. There’s your “hint”,” Lux sighs. Liam smiles again as he looks at Lux.

 

_Valentine’s Day._

 

Very easy hint. Apparently, Lux only fucks love Gods in Lust.

 

Sounds like Cupid, son of Venus of love which would mean he and Adonis are pretty tight too.

 

God of desire and eroticism… basically lust. That can very much be possible, seeing Cupid actually _did_ have a girlfriend/soulmate. Of course he comes to Lust as well.

 

 _“Cupid and Psyche.”_ Lux finally their names and Liam doesn’t know why he’s so shocked when he literally just guessed it.

 

His mouth falls open anyways.

 

“They get down like _that?”_

 

“Next question.” He says immediately after before Liam can say anything else with his cheeky smirk.

 

“ _A ménages à trois”_ Liam grins as he nods his head up and down. _“Wow…”_

 

Liam only just recently found out that Zayn likes threesomes. So of course, Lux must too. They both seem to have a thing for _love triangles..._

 

“Don’t do that.” Lux grimaces.

 

“Don’t do what?”

 

“Try to be cute. It’s disgusting.”

 

Liam laughs, shaking his head as he sits up on one elbow.

 

“I thought you _liked_ disgusting?”

 

“I _love_ disgusting.”

 

_You love a lot of things, liar._

 

Liam doesn’t have the gall to say that outloud as he holds in his impulse with his lips closed tight this time.

 

“Okay, what are the others?” He says instead, moving right along. “You’re siblings.”

 

Lux turns his head back up, sweeping a few flower petals off from under his eyes, crushing it up between his fingers into actual dust absently as he talks.

 

“Yellow bile is _warm_ and dry. That’s a personality that’s short-tempered and quick. Like my brother Ira and my sister Dia. Ira was in his heart. Dia was in his literal anus. She’s in the middle, after Ira. I honestly think she might’ve been a pile of shit but, she denies it so, whatever.”

 

Liam bursts out laughing really hard.

 

“It’s possible!” Lux laughs.

 

Liam nods.

 

“I believe you.”

 

Lux snorts as he smiles at Liam before looking at the sky again.

 

“She obviously got the worst of his personality and is generally the biggest asshole out of all of us -no pun intended. She and Ira are the fastest cause they’re speed demons. They can both control hellfire as well but envy isn’t as powerful as wrath or lust. I’ve never actually met Ira though, he’s lived in Cocytus for ages and he would definitely kill me if he ever saw me. They always say I’m just like him but my temper is _nothing_ compared to his.”

 

“Why would he kill you?”

 

“Because he’d think I was Narcissus. That’s who he hated the most.”

 

Liam’s glad he’s far away from here.

 

“Red bile is warm and _moist_ , like blood. Ava and Morosa. Morosa came from his mortified skin and Avaritia was his cerebral cortex. Ava ended up modifying his flesh as well with the tats so, they’re just _really_ into blood.”

 

 _Body modification._ Liam thinks.

 

Mortifying your flesh means cleansing and purging of sin. Like piercings and tattoos, which happens to also be sin to change the skin you were born with that according to the bible. So he literally purged his pride with his _flesh._

 

Nars was a _very_ clever boy.

 

So then he also fancied body modification in the past as well. He had a very even tan but, nowhere near as many tattoos as Zayn does right now. He stopped counting after 10 by the time he was 16.

 

“Those personality types are typically very charming and social butterflies. Ava and Morosa are _the_ thirstiest demons I’ve ever met for the blood of sinful humans. What you’d call hunters. As you know, Ava is a marilith and my twin in a succubus. Liv and Ant got the social aspect of it from Ava as well if you wanna count them as my germanas but, they’re more like you than _me_.”

 

Liam figures he means they’re very human-like. It’s cool that considers them more like sisters or his friends rather than _just_ his nieces.

 

“And then there’s green bile, _cold_ and moist like phlegm. That is relaxed, calm temperament. People who just don’t seem to give a fuck. Ace and G. The laziest sacks of shit you will ever meet despite how much they study and teach. Ace and G are like sages but, G is a marilith and Ace is a hermit. A snake and a recluse. There's like a billion types. As many colours there are in the universe. Those were Nars. Most people don’t fall on so many opposite ends of the personality spectrum of like he did but, he never followed the rules his entire life so, y’know.” Lux shrugs.

 

“That’s where we get all our personality, humour, temper, sin, virtue… just basically everything that we are. I may not have actually known him like everyone else but all anyone really had to do to get a real picture of the type of person he was is just combined all his demons.”

 

It seems like Lux is the loner in his family.

 

The disreputable black sheep, even more obvious in the fact that everyone else got a pair in their personality and Lux is the odd, darkest one out. That’s inevitable, given that there’s 7 of them but Liam doesn’t think that’s a coincidence.

 

Even hearing how he describes Narcissus in detail like that, the _exact_ same way you’d describe Zayn, it still doesn’t feel like the same person to Liam.

 

Maybe he just doesn’t want to believe that Zayn is really him because then he’d have to accept the reality that he’s been feeling an indescribable emptiness and pain inside his entire life. And now Liam really knows why. Actually, he still doesn’t but, at least he knows what parts Nars sacrificed.

 

“What am I?”

 

Lux looks over Liam briefly, eyes scrutinising down his body as he licks his lips, catching a few petals on his tongue that he swallows as his adam’s apple bobs with the shadow of the faint beard growing at his neck, purposely accentuating his throat. Liam doesn’t think he’ll ever not be turned on by his Adam’s apple. There’s still a faint love bite there from this morning.

 

He stops thinking about his neck and turns over on his back so Lux won’t keep ogling his ass.

 

“I’ve never been inside you so I dunno… I can look a bit _closer_ if you want.” Lux smirks with a suggestive eyebrow.

 

“Or you could keep telling me about Zayn’s past.” Liam loftily pushes on with talking even though Lux always turns it into flirting, which makes Lux snort, rolling his eyes forward.

 

“You’re not full of _bile_ Li. Bile is gross and ugly. I really don’t know how your body is made. You’re full of light and… wadding. Whatever the fuck soft bodies are made of with.”

 

 _“Wadding?”_ Liam repeats as he laughs. Lux really thinks he’s stuffed with clouds.

 

“Am I a teddy bear?”

 

“Are teddy bears luminary bundles of vivacious, soft material that is made with the feathers of angels?”

 

Liam’s eyes roll up slowly as he thinks.

 

“... yes, actually.” He nods.

 

“Then I guess you’re a teddy bear, sunshine.”

 

They sit there laughing for a while as Liam describes to Lux what a teddy bear is, which makes Lux laugh even harder. When Liam tells him about how there’s things called fairs on the surface where you can play games and win teddy bears and other stuffed animals as prizes or buy at toy shops for children, Lux’s infatuation with the entire thing reminds Liam that Lux really didn’t explore Earth too much at all. He’s an alien to his own planet.

 

“Maybe we can go to one.” he smiles. “A toy shop. Teddy bears sound fascinating.”

 

“You're such a child.” Liam shakes his head with a smile.

 

“I _love_ children.”

 

“I know… why?”

 

Lux goes on to tell Liam how he never really got to be a child _himself_ since he was born 17 and has always been that way but he always found comfort with children rather than “idiotic adults”. Because they grow into different people as they age. They’re not born with anyone serving them a purpose or order. They get to live on and find it themselves as they grow.

 

It’s the first time Lux has shown less disdain for something in humanity that he doesn’t understand and more… respect for something he actually admires about humams and findsbeautiful, even if he’ll never experience that. It makes Liam look at humanity a little different. He’s right. Kids get to grow and change.

 

Not even Lux could dislike children and it makes Liam like him even more because that’s something completely independent from Zayn that Lux thinks about because he was raised around children and he watched all his friends grow up without him.

 

And now Liam knows why Lux turned into such a slut on the surface. Humans might not be Gods but Lux thinks the human body is beautiful. He admires it enough to have sex with beings that aren't love Gods.

 

Liam doesn't have to be told that Lux likes the way humans fuck. 

 

They really did this whole "getting to know you" thing backwards but, Liam’s glad they’re past their first encounters and actually getting to know each other. Well, not really but Liam’s just getting a lot better at ignoring the tension. Or accepting that it’s there instead of ignoring it completely.

 

There could be a research analysis written about them right now, the interrelations between conscious beings, closely interacting to the point where two out of three are actually overlapping each other and then the another two out of three are in a romantic relationship and the last two are way too close to be considered platonic but not quite romantic either.

 

Like… he knows Lux has an affinity and attraction to physical pleasure with Liam… as does he. But somehow, there’s still amity here. And it didn’t take that long at all to find. Lux continues with a bored sigh, as if voicing his own personal insight disinterests him.

 

“Anyways,” he goes back to the topic. “ _Memento mori_ is more like a lesson than a curse. The “curse” is whatever is binding us together. The lesson he reflected on was supposed to teach him discipline through abstinence so he’d realise and accept his mortality. It’s literally just a reminder to mortals. Always remember… you’re gonna fucking _die_ one day. So ACT like it and stop being a hubristic _twat.”_

 

Liam snorts at how he phrases it. He doubts the God’s discussed it like that when they punished him.

 

“It’s a simple lesson to learn. But he was so fucking _stupid.”_ Lux scoffs, shaking his head.

 

“He was _supposed_ to accept that there is no luxury in self-indulgence and that he would _die_ if he continued. Instead of learning his lesson and seeing what he did wrong, he learned _nothing_ and rejected everything, like always. Turned his dumb virtue into a deadly sin. His resentment towards his reflection became like a suicidal thought, a backwards and exaggerated twist to his reminder of death. Reminded himself he could die in the only way a human being can.”

 

“He drowned himself.” Liam murmurs, thinking about what Luke said with a ghost of a chill in his bones.

 

_‘...kill yourself in one life, you’ll keep doing it forever.’_

 

Lux shakes his head.

 

“That’s one of the many points in this tale that’s been fucked up as well.” Lux tells him.

 

“Some say he lost his will to live from never being able to see Adara again. Some say it was just a childish act of defiance in being forced to reflect on himself. Some say he was _pushed_ . I even once heard that he just simply tripped over and _fell._ The only concrete thing I know is, he couldn’t swim.”

 

That’s the only concrete thing Liam has been getting too.

 

He thinks of all the years he spent trying to show Zayn how to swim in lake Logae. They were all of 15 the last time he tried before they just decided Zayn was just water repellent.

 

 _“Z, all you have to do is float like this,”_ Liam was floating on his back while Zayn shivered in his shorts, shaking his head at Liam from where he was sitting with his legs dangling over the dock.

 

 _“No.”_ He held his lips in a single line.

 

_“Come on…”_

 

 _“Yeah… I_ don’t _like water. Last time, I drowned.”_

 

He didn’t. He was just being overly dramatic and panicky about treading water.

 

_“I don’t care if you’re in there naked. I’m not getting in with you.”_

 

Liam’s mind glossed over that comment, as always thinking he’s just joking. “Zayn would say that to _anyone_.”

 

In hindsight… he is an _idiot._

 

_“Why don’t you just wade for a bit then, babe? It’s not that deep.”_

 

 _“Why don’t you just lick my dick then, Liam?”_ Zayn smiled sweetly. Liam frowned at his sharpness concealed under his smile.

 

_“Didn’t think so. Because it IS that deep. I’m NOT drowning again.”_

 

Liam didn’t even bother with arguing about how he’s never drowned in the _first_ place. He never tried to get him to get to try ever again after that day.

 

Zayn never even wanted to _touch_ the water unless you forced him into it like Louis once did when he flipped his canoe over to give Zayn an on-the-spot lesson that same year and he almost _killed_ Zayn.

 

All that got Louis was the silent treatment for over a month.

 

Thinking back to that even now… the irony was really mind blowing. Zayn _never_ would’ve touched that marsh on his own even if you put a loaded gun to his head.

 

Maybe someone tried to drown Nars.

 

“Everyone knew he couldn’t swim.” Lux continues as Liam’s mind zones back into the present.

 

“He was born to water spirits _drowning_ in his own bath in the ground instead of swimming. He was literally born breaking rules. So either someone attempted to murder him or he threw himself in knowing he would die… whatever the case was, homicide or suicide or a stupid accident, he went straight to hell and was confronted by death somewhere in this very pocket of space we’re in now.” Lux gestures around them.

 

“I’m thinking it was suicide. I don’t think Death approaches people like that who die any other way. But he was a very private person so a lot of things are unknown about him because he didn’t tell anyone. Not even Ace knew everything about his life.”

  
  
“Why are you so sure it was suicide?”

 

“Liam… I’ve seen what he thinks about. I can’t even tell you on one hand how many times he’s actually _tried_ to kill me before I decided to help. Maybe he didn’t… or _doesn’t_ realise those things are suicide but… it is. Self-injury isn’t always physical. It can be cutting all your loses because you maybe just want the pain of being stuck where you are to go away forever.”

 

Of course, he’s been walking in Zayn’s actual shoes for over a month. He knows way more about him than Ace ever will because Ace will never be in his body.

 

There seems to be a bad stench in the air that’s making them not talk about if Zayn has actually acted on any of this before he met Lux. Even with Nars, when he came to where they are right now.

 

Liam can’t see anything but blushing blankets surrounding them through screens of flowers.

 

He sees Ari in the distance, diving in and out of them ever so often like he’s swimming, twisting around with his wings before disappearing below, popping up again 10 feet away only to do it again.

 

“How did Ace know his name was gonna be Zayn?” Liam asks suddenly.

 

Lux looks at Liam with narrow eyes.

 

“Who told you that?”

 

Liam shrugs, telling him the guys at the skatepark mentioned it.

 

Lux bites his lip a little.

 

“They say… he told people to call him that sometimes.” He admits.

 

Liam nods slowly. He supposes everything has really lost it’s shock value now. So… he could see into the future. Big deal. That’s about the least weirdest thing he’s heard so far today.

 

“Okay, then what happened after he came here?” Liam moves on with his chin in his hands. Lux quirks an eyebrow at him.

 

“That’s it? No more questions about being called Zayn?”

 

“Do you know how he knew his next name?”

 

“He didn’t say that was gonna be his name. He just liked being called that sometimes. It’s a pretty common name isn’t it? My friend Xhane is called Zane sometimes but I just say it like Shane cause then she sounds like a boy.” Lux snorts.

 

Zayn Malik literally sounds _nothing_ like Narcissus.

 

“Whatever. Cool. ” Liam shrugs, completely over it now, which makes Lux laugh.

 

 _“Ummm…. okay.”_ He moves on as well with knitted brows.

 

“When he got here, he made a deal to get back on the surface to be free of his curse in hell. 1,000 years of making a name for himself all over the world later, I’m born as a demon and he finally is able to go back home to his own world.” Lux shrugs.

 

“So you’re…”

 

“I’m a lot of things Liam. I just _am._ I’m his lust. I’m his reflection - reflection of his mortality. His _reminder_ of death… which doesn’t even exist to him anymore. I’m _his demon._ The nature of a reflection in every sense makes it impossible to know if I’m in a reality _you_ can ever comprehend without the assistance of my demonic essence you can sense all around you. Or if that reality even exists at all. Only Zayn can _truly_ see me. Even before we “met”.”

 

Well little does he fucking know, Liam _can see him_ without his demonic essence _._ And he can feel that Lux is there. Liam knows he exists because Liam _can_ exist on his plane. He’s experienced some weird shit with mirrors and the strange plane of existence that’s there in them. And he’d bet his life that if he did that again with Lux in it too, then they’d REALLY know that he’s real.

 

“After I’m gone, maybe he’ll miss me but missing something isn’t always a bad or good thing. It’s just a feeling he’ll have inside.”

 

“Why has he only been feeling _you_ missing? Why wouldn’t he feel that all of you were missing?” He asks instead of telling him he doesn’t know what he’s even talking about isn’t true for Liam.

 

Lux only lifts his shoulder up slowly, folding his hands out on his stomach.

 

“I’m not like the rest of them.” He says honestly. “They might be physical but they aren’t what he sees when he looks at himself. He can never see his skin or his eyes or his heart or his ribs or his brain or his ass. But he can see _me._ Like for example the most obvious thing Narcissus gave up that changed physically was his skin and eyes but, even seeing that in the mirror, he’d still just see _me_. You understand what I’m saying?” Lux squints and Liam nods.

 

So then that means… Narcissus probably looked like how Zayn looks _now_ at the start and end of his life. In the middle, he looked like Lux.

 

Blame the sun.

 

Ace and Morosa were the first two he sold. His skin tanned from sunbathing all day and his eyes faded from the sunlight. His tan was Morosa cause that was what he was obviously most proud of. And his faded, sleepy eyes he saw everything with were Ace.

 

This just keeps getting more and more _weird._ But it’s good. The more he knows the better. Even if he doesn’t really want to know… he needs to.

 

“With Zayn now, I own a dark heart. A head full of disgusting black hair. A pair of brown eyes and attentive ears. A set of _really_ nice balls… ” His face pinches when he says that and Liam can’t help laughing in the middle when he wiggles his eyebrows with a sly smile, pushing Lux to the side as his head drops into the cloud to muffle his cackling instead of saying they’ve found more things to agree on.

 

The knowledge that Lux really is also attracted to Zayn like _that_ is probably the funniest thing about them to Liam. It takes the phrase “Go fuck yourself,” to an upper echelon.

 

Narcissism to the _maximum_. Liam doesn’t think Zayn feels the same.

 

“... and I breath in and out.” He finishes with a sigh as Liam’s head sits back up.

 

“But unlike Zayn, I’m mortal.” He says seriously now. Liam slowly begins to frown a little.

 

“And unlike him, I’ve only been here one time. That’s all I’m ever gonna get. Sure, I’m really hard to get rid of and I’m impervious to most injuries. But mortality is something that will _never_ exist in his reality anymore. A.k.a. _Me_ .” Lux holds it for a moment, giving Liam a small shrug with his hands opened a little on his stomach again, as if to say _“there ya go.”_

 

“Luxie… this wasn’t your _fault_.” Liam tries to find of silver lining in this. Lux’s brow shrug on his face.

 

“Yeah… you’re right. I didn’t ask to be alive.” He agrees simply. “I wasn’t even supposed to be here, formed like this outside of him. Not everything has to happen for a reason. Maybe some things happen for _no_ reason.”

 

That’s _not_ what Liam meant at all.

 

“This isn’t anyone’s “fault” as far as I’m concerned. There’s so many factors and all this extra shit I’m not even gonna bother with talking about that go into the curse because there’s so many missing pieces from the past, we’ll most likely _never_ know why this happened. Shit just happens.”

 

“Then… how do you know he hated you? Just because he says he does _now_ doesn’t mean he did in the past…”

 

“Liam… don't be so _naive.”_ Lux rolls his eyes.

 

“Don't be such a _pessimist.”_ He shoots back at him. Lux shakes his head with his eyes rolled up.

 

Liam doesn’t want to fight him with words. He’ll definitely lose.

 

“Nars gladly hung around _all_ of his other demons for centuries. As soon as he got rid of me, he left me. Of course he hated me. He couldn’t live on the surface like a normal person because of me. It doesn’t matter who’s fault it was, I still ruined his _life_ . They ALL hated me. Cause they knew Nars would leave if I came… and he did. I took away his life on the surface and then I pushed away my their friend here. And _honestly,”_

 

He looks at Liam with another shrug.

 

“I don't even blame him for it. Not anymore.”

 

Liam turns on his stomach again like Lux and looks at the sky above.

 

“I used to resent them all but... I realise now that he really _did_ have a life that I took away from him.” Lux looks up at him through his lashes as his eyes lull little, looking at Liam with honest, heartfelt softness.

 

“His entire life was up in the _sky…_ not on the ground. I probably would’ve hated me too if I was with you all my life and then suddenly ripped away from you. Even if I just spent my life staring at you. I get the obsession. You’re very easy on the eyes. So sorry if I _stare_ … you’re still beautiful too.”

 

Liam holds onto the tears wanting to come out as Lux looks away again, towards the raining marsh now. But his softness stays in Liam.

 

God he’s such a sentimental _sap_. But Lux just unabashedly says really sweet things and it makes Liam teary eyed for how fucked up everything is and how nice it could be if one element changed.

 

Even sitting here on this breath-taking rooftop in their pleasant place. It only exists in this place because an aquaphobic boy drowned to literal _Death_ and went to hell. That’s not a breath-taking thought at all.

 

“All Nars wanted was Adara and he got stuck with _me._ He hated me with his entire heart and that very hate gave birth to Ira. If my brother ever saw us, he’d rip me out and _murder_ me. Because he vowed to take back his heart if he ever showed his face in Cocytus again and the core of my being is clinging to Zayn’s heart right now. Because his heart was the most threat to his life after High Tide got done with him. Right now in this life, he will most likely torture him in Cocytus forever. Because that’s what demons in Cocytus do. He didn’t _always_ hate him. They were friends for a really long time. But Narcissus is the reason Ira got sent to Cocytus in the first place. It wasn’t because he killed a guy or because he burned a hole in Lust. Abraxas and Nars were friends so, the fact that Ira got away with killing his son should give you an indication to how privileged we actually are to come from someone like him. Ira just got into a huge fight with Nars he purged him into Cocytus _himself._ ”

 

Well, being friends with the King of demons, Liam supposes Narcissus had some pretty handy jurisdiction to sticking his enemies somewhere it would hurt. That’s actually says a lot that Abraxas actually valued his friendship with Nars over his own _son’s life._ But then again, father son relations being totally fucked like that is something that hits pretty close to home for Liam.

 

The last memory of his father Liam has is almost suffocating and he didn’t seem to care as he left him alone in the house as he was almost dying and never came back so… there you go.

 

He wonders what they got into a fight about. It turns out, his reflection wasn’t actually his worst demon.

 

Zayn’s worst demon is his _wrath._ And he brought it to life and now he lives in Cocytus somewhere, probably killing fallen olympians in his free time or something. And there’s his reason for why he’s looked at himself and wanted to die. His heart.

 

Too many fucking problems.

 

Lux crosses one ankle over the other, getting back into his usual pose with his eyes to the sky.

 

“As he is cursed to live in vain by Nemesis, the only way he will be free from his fixation with me is if he destroys my pit when it’s most vulnerable on the full moon. At least then, he won’t be _actually_ stuck to me when he goes back to the surface ever again. And you’ll be all clean again. Two birds, one stone.”

 

“He was cursed by his nemesis?”

 

Lux shakes his head.

 

“No, his was cursed _by_ Nemesis. She’s the goddess who gives out everyone’s divine retribution. Punishing mortals. Someone brought Nars’ behaviour to her attention and she cursed his image in response.”

 

Liam pouts a little as he blinks down into the cloud.

 

“Nemesis sounds like a _bitch_.” He mumbles.

 

Lux jolts as a laugh jumps lightly in his throat.

 

“Have you _ever_ called someone that before?” Lux wheezes as his voice skids. Liam shakes his head with a wide, closed-mouthed smile as he listens to the strange way Lux laughs when he’s laughing _really_ hard. It comes out soft.

 

Lux shakes his head at him.

 

“Don’t call women bitches. She’s just the messenger.”

 

“Are you kidding me?” Liam squints. “Says the one who calls all his _friends_ bitches?”

 

“Fuck boys. You can call them bitches.” Lux shrugs. “Literally _fuck_ boys.” His eyebrows emphasise what he actually means, making Liam shake his head at him.

 

“Be careful cursing Gods like that in the wrong place.” Lux warns him. “They tend to hide in plain sight and they are _very_ vindictive beings with more power than anyone should have. Biggest _dicks_ you’ll ever meet.”

 

His eyebrows quirk once around the word “dick” as he smirks to himself after he says that last bit. He does that attractive thing they do with their mouth when they’re thinking about something dirty, which makes Liam blush really hard. Now that he knows about his sexual orientation in more detail, his allusions to having relationships with Gods and Goddesses are totally different than before.   

 

That reminds him of the demon God, leaving their mark all over their town right now like a dog taking a piss on his territory. Except his territory is all the teenagers in Manningtree and his piss is the very intense scourge of the universe.

 

He was gonna ask Lux if he knows about the morning star and if that’s Luke’s dad that Lux spent his childhood terrorising, Abraxas. But he waits because he’s still telling Liam about being the result Zayn’s curse and Luke is probably an enemy of Lux’s that he’s most likely not gonna want to talk about.

 

“So yeah, anyways,” he sighs again, clearly tired of talking about this.

 

Liam promises himself he won’t make Lux talk about it ever again. Talking about someone being so angry with you to the point that they want you to go and die is obviously something that’ll never be easy for Lux. Because he doesn’t get it from just Zayn. He’s got that from his brothers too.

 

“Zayn will immortal for as long as he exists. I'm not. The human soul is immortal on it’s own so, I’d never be immortal anyways.”

 

“Souls are immortal?” Liam murmurs. Lux nods from side to side, scratching under his chin.

 

“Well, not in the way _you're_ thinking. There’s different forms of immortality.” He flicks dust out from under his chin the sprinkle over his fingertips and folds his hands again.

 

“Your soul can be damaged, scarred and even destroyed completely. Zayn's has been through some intense shit and has a fuck load of battle scars underneath this flawless skin. But certain qualities of it are immortal. There's stuff like sexual immorality, being deathless like Zayn... etcetera. Some things last for so long, they become immortal. Like sunsets. They come back to life everyday because light is immortal-like. Dew drops on blades of grass come back to their homes because water is immortal-like as well. There’s lots of things that can be immortal.”

 

The way he talks about inanimate things like they’re really alive is so entertaining. Liam supposes a legacy can make you immortal.

 

 _“Memory.”_ He adds gravely. Lux can be immortal in a that way. But Liam won’t be able to hold him in his memory when he’s gone.

 

_Remember his name._

 

Lux nods.

 

“ _Oh yeeeah,”_ He drags it out for a second. “You’re _right_ memory can be immortal, huh?” He rubs his chin as he thinks about it, like that one never occurred to him.

 

“I suppose people on the surface found ways to be immortal. I’ve read old books by people like Eliot, Browning, Nietzsche, Tennyson, Hardy, Dickens… all those dead guys. Their memory is immortal even after they moved on.”

 

“Geez,” Liam snorts, shaking his head. He reads the same crap Zayn reads.

 

“What’s your favourite book?” Liam asks him.

 

Lux takes a minute to think about it as he looks at the raining marsh.

 

“I dunno.” He ends up just shrugging. Liam laughs as he looks up towards the marsh as well.

 

There’s a long pause as he looks past the surface.

 

“What’s your favourite… memory?” He ends up asking.

 

As Liam thinks about that, he stares through the marsh, at the sky on the other side. It never really matches what it’s doing out there. The day is only halfway through but it looks like the sun is still setting on the other side already. It’s probably because the marsh reflects the clouds in Lust so he sees a sunset that’s not really there.

 

Liam wonders if his memory is out there somewhere, floating away from and leaving with amnesia.

 

“I don’t think it’s happened yet.” Lux says after a while. “How about you?”

 

Liam’s got a lot to choose from.

 

Telling him about his favourite colour. The hours on the hill after that. The first time he got his braces off. The day he found out he actually made the football team.

 

“I dunno.” Liam resigns with honestly. He knows he wants to keep Lux in his memory at least.

 

But, even if Lux stayed in hell, he’d still affect Zayn’s life on the surface every single day. Like how he already had been. But then that means… his heart did too. Of course his heart affected his aversion to seeing himself.

 

Finding out why he’s hated looking at himself his entire life was much more than just from teenaged angst or even just _Lux_ had to have shattered Zayn when he came back here, finding out his heart was fucked up too. Kind of like going to the doctor for a sore throat and finding out that you’ve actually got cancer.

 

The answer to self-hate isn't to _kill yourself._ Any part of yourself.

 

“Liam it’s better to forget things sometimes. You shouldn’t know as much as you do now about these kind of worlds. When I say sometimes I wish I could turn you back into a stranger, it’s not because I dislike being around you. I just wish you never came _here_.” Lux says seriously when Liam emotion starts bleeding out into him again.

 

Liam bites his lip in as he looks at Lux, turning over on his belly again.

 

“Won’t your other family have anything to say?”

 

Lux shrugs.

 

“I don’t think they’d really mind. I’m not the easiest demon to be around. I fully understood… _why_ , I guess.” Lux squints.

 

“Ace never looked at me the way he looked at Ant and Liv _._ I knew he didn’t want me there. I drove his best friend away after so many years of having him there with him his entire life, leaving him with _me._ He’s probably the most excited about the end of this out of everyone involved. Finally getting rid of me. _”_

 

 

Lux snorts as he looks at Liam, who’s covering his red nose in his arm.

 

“As my peers eagerly informed you, I’m kind of a handful to be around. I've caused him more grief than I have Zayn.”

 

“That’s normal for most people our age. He's your guardian, you're a teenager.” Liam mumbles. Lux closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

 

“Okay, pause.” He looks at Liam then. “Either, you’re not a very good listener - which I know you _are_ so that means you’re just determined to ignore what I say - and this is going to be a huge problem because I _hate_ repeating myself and you make me beat all our horses dead.” He starts slowly. Liam shakes his head.

 

“That’s not how that expression works--”  

 

 _“Ap.”_ Lux shushes him, buttoning Liam’s lips with his fingers as he closes his mouth for him and puts his other index finger over his own lips with his eyes closed.

 

 _“Numerus unus_ ," He counts in Latin.

 

 

"I’m not a person. I can’t stress enough that I’m _not_ a person.” He says calmly as Liam pulls off his hand with a smile.

 

“ _Numerus duo_ , for the LAST time, _I don’t age._ I’ve been the same age my entire life. I was born looking like a 1,000 year old teenaged boy and I haven’t aged once in my life. How fucked up is that? Imagine me in a class of a dozen other _normal_ looking 5 year olds, learning how to read... which I secretly already knew how to do by the way but humouring them was fun for a while.” He snorts as he recalls his strange pastime.

 

Yeah, Lux is definitely… _complex._ He’s existed for 1,000 years in dispersed parts of Narcissus. But he’s also 18. But he’s still 17.

 

He’s technically only a few months older than Zayn. It’s like he’s dating an old man.

 

Liam is gonna save the confusion and just consider Lux 17. He’s been 17 forever. Simple as that.

 

“I am _not_ normal. I’m a freak of nature.”

 

“Same.” Liam snorts, nodding in agreement.

 

“That might as well have been my nickname back on Earth.”

 

Lux laughs.

 

“You’re not a _freak…_ you don’t know _what_ you are. I don’t even know what you are.”

 

“I think I do….” Liam squints teasingly before smiling. “I’m Liam. You’re Lux. And we’re _wonders_ of nature. Not freaks.”

 

They smile at each other, acknowledging strange elephants sitting with them.

 

“So… if you were _technically_ 5 years old, how did you secretly knew how to read already if no one taught you how?”

 

Lux holds his lips in as he squints at Liam for a few seconds before saying anything, contemplating something internal before he decides.

 

“Okay I’m gonna let you in on something but you have to promise you won’t tell anyone.” Lux says seriously. Who the fuck is he gonna tell?

 

Instead of saying that, Liam nods, holding out his pinky.

 

“Promise.”

 

“What’s that mean?” Lux looks at his pinky with a confused smile, mimicking him. Liam laughs, wrapping his pinky around Lux’s.

 

“It’s a pinky promise. It means I have to keep your secret. You’ve kept all mine, it’s only fair.”

 

The smile falls off Lux’s face pulling his hand away as he frowns with his eyes falling down again.

 

 _“Right…”_ He murmurs, almost like he might be… _guilty?_ It’s quickly followed by a pause until he starts with a small disclaimer.

 

“I’m gonna try to get you to understand how old I am. It’s confusing for everyone to understand. Most of my family _still_ don’t even understand me so I’m not expecting you to straight away,”

 

Liam narrows his eyes a little as he waits for him to go on although… he gets the feeling he knows what Lux is about to say already.

 

“I’ve never had the sensibility of a _5 year old_ because I’ve never been… 5… years… old.” He waits for Liam to nod with him to indicate he understands, which he _does_ … _he thinks?_ Tony said Lux had no sensibility aside from being a reflection, which still doesn’t make sense to Liam how taught him to _think_ or act independently but whatever.

 

Lux elaborates when Liam still seems confused.

 

“I came from Nars, Liam. He wasn’t 5, he was _17_ . I had the knowledge and sensibility of a 17 year old… as in I knew everything he knew how to do at 17. I knew how to read and how to speak different languages like him and I knew how to laugh if I thought something was funny and walk if I wanted to go somewhere and so on. Just like I am now. I wasn’t illiterate or mute. I still had personality and consciousness and general knowledge. No one taught me how to read or talk or do anything like that because I’ve _always_ known how to do that. My sister taught me how to be an incubus. And I watched TV sometimes and read books and went to school for demons so I learned _more_ languages and other things demons should know how to do easy but… I wasn’t born blank-minded. I’ve always been the same Lux.” Lux shakes his head seriously.

 

“What do you mean?” Liam frowns. “Your brother said--”

 

“Fuck _my brothers.”_ Lux scoffs. “They never shut up about what they don’t even understand. They don’t know _shit_ about me Liam.” Lux tsks, shaking his head.

 

“They don’t care to. I was functioning in my house perfectly _fine_ without them. They think I was born with this mirror for a brain or something… that’s not the case _at all._ I could always function perfectly fine by myself. I wasn’t born a _baby._ I was born exactly the same as I am now. I just didn’t know how to use my powers back then. I could still function independently.”

 

Liam sits up quickly, looking down at Lux in utter confusion.

 

 _“What?”_ He squints, shaking his head. “If you could function on your own, why would they treat you couldn’t…?”

 

“Cause they didn’t know I was a conscious of my actions. They still think I can’t talk or move without my pit… obviously you seen that I _can._ They treated me like I was an actual reflection in a mirror. But I can move and talk in a mirror on my own just as easily as I can outside of it…. just like you. Being in a mirror doesn’t make you a reflection does it?”

 

Liam shakes his head slowly.

 

“Right. Because we’re _conscious_ . Reflections have more than one definition. I’m not _just_ that kind of reflection… I’m a balance of both. Reflections in mirrors can’t talk or move on their own… or come out of the mirror. But I could do whatever I wanted just like you can when I was alone. Always have. I just didn’t know what else to do when I first saw other people so I just went along with what they told me to do. They didn’t have to put me in school.” He shrugs.

 

“You knew how to _talk_ on your own the _entire. Time?”_

 

 _“Of course.”_ Lux laughs really hard at Liam’s expression as he nods, holding his stomach and Liam doesn’t think he’s following at all.

 

“I don’t understand…” Liam shakes his head _very_ slowly as he looks at the marsh.

 

“Why don’t they know this?”

 

“I never told them.” He shrugs simply.

 

His face goes blank as he watches himself in the marsh too.

 

“I didn’t speak at all when I was around anyone else. I never had a reason to. If anyone came over, I’d go to my room or somewhere away from everyone else. They thought the same thing you did. That a reflection lives in a mirror so I wasn’t allowed to leave the marsh alone. As far as everyone knew, a reflection can’t talk or move by itself so putting me in school to “train” me to act normal was the solution. I couldn’t function with them breathing down my goddamn _neck_. The only one of my brothers I could be sane with at the time was G. I just stuck around with him cause he didn’t make me burn everything and he didn’t talk to me. All he did was read. So I did too. He just let me be. I wasn’t stupid. I could talk just _fine_ when I was alone. I just couldn’t talk when someone else was _near me._ I couldn’t communicate properly to save my life for _long time._ They treated me like an _explosive_ _baby_ and I couldn’t stand it.”

 

“You never told them that?”

 

Lux shakes his head

 

_“Why?!?”_

 

That’s what didn’t make sense to Liam. He figured he could always talk. How could he not? He’s Zayn’s _conscious._ Of course he could act independently just like the rest of them. He’s pretty much everything Zayn is without a body. It just seems like no one else actually knows to this very day based off what _Tony_ said.

 

Do they even know his full name? Maybe they just don’t care.

 

“My sister told me not to say anything.” He shrugs. “My brothers didn’t treat me like I was a conscious being. They treated me like a _literal_ reflection.”

 

“How do you _treat_ someone like a reflection?”

 

“You don’t usually look in the mirror and see another being… you just see some _thing_ that doesn’t really serve a real purpose or context without _you_ . In fact, you barely notice and recognise its actual existence as something that exists _with_ you, let alone _without_ you. That’s how they treated me. Because your reflection _doesn’t_ serve a real purpose and reflections don’t really exist as independent things. They’re liminal. When you look at yours, you expect it to only be there because _you’re there_ and you expect it to move when _you_ move and not be there _when you’re not there_ . They’re not their own beings. So when the reflection does something out of place, like move without you or still exist there when you’re gone, reality is altered and everything becomes shifted on a higher plane. Where Nars left me. Ergo, I become _superliminal - a_ paradox in an altered reality. I leave the threshold of context. I can exist on my own. And I can… not exist. If I exist, there’s no context. If I don’t exist… there’s still no context because I can fucking talk without an apparently existing voice and you can see me without an apparently existing body. Do you understand the confusion surrounding the existence of me now?”

 

Liam nods, still trying to figure out if he should tell Lux he’s pretty sure he’d be able to see him there clearly as he is if he came out of the shadow if he just concentrated.

 

Lux _isn’t_ a reflection in a mirror. He’s a reflection in someone’s mind. But the thing about thoughts are, their existence is just as altered in the mind as the one’s in a mirror are. They both aren’t supposed to exist as independent beings. Reflections do not exist for themselves. They only exist for other things to reflect on. Without those things reflecting well… they don’t exist.

 

So Lux really might not exist. With or without Zayn. But he _does_ exist. And then you keep saying that over and over until forever.

 

“I didn’t know that when I was first born Liam.” Lux continues.

 

“So how the hell could I communicate all that shit to anyone? No one realised that I was independent when I wasn’t being forced to do what they wanted me to do. I’m naturally _inclined_ to give you what you want because that’s what lust is. Not because of the reflecting. My emotion reflects. But I can still do whatever I want even if I’m reflecting in the mirror, like I showed you. The only way you can control my _actions_ is if you compel me. Before I could control my powers, it wasn’t a choice. I was _forced_ to act a certain way against my will. I still am even now sometimes when I’m overpowered with everyone’s fucking emotion. Anything can literally be driven _into_ my mind out of my control. It wasn’t natural for me to behave as if I was in a _literal_ mirror. I just did cause that’s what they compelled me to do. There was so much chaos when they came into the house and saw me. They panicked and it made me panic and no one knew what the fuck was going on. Especially _me_.”

 

“Wow…” Liam shakes his head slowly. That _sounds_ really horrible.

 

“So because of the ignorance, Ace literally kept me locked in the house and ordered me around because I couldn’t control my powers and would make things explode outside when my state of being got overwhelmed. I didn’t mean to... but I wasn’t even allowed outside. He compelled me because _he_ can’t control hellfire like me but anyone can control _me_. I couldn’t do anything on my own because they wouldn’t _let me._ When I was alone, I could be who I am. But around everyone else, I thought I was supposed to be obedient. No one even _tried_ to guide me when I first got here but my sister. Everyone else looked at me and saw this dangerous _thing_ that no one knew what to do with. So they threw me in the house or in school and I just went with it for a while. The most _boring_ fucking time of my life was being around those heathen I call my siblings. They were so stupid. They thought something was wrong with me when I was just doing what they were making me do.”

 

“Then… how did you ever start acting normal around everyone else?”

 

Now Liam is completely confused as to how no one ever notice that Lux wasn’t born clueless. It seems so obvious that the only thing he was “naturally inclined” to do was… _act like Nars._ Not a _reflection_.

 

And now the mystery of why he doesn’t like mirrors or calling himself a reflection makes a lot more sense. The double meaning caused a lot of confusion. A normal reflection in a mirror doesn’t have a choice in reflecting. But a mimesis has a choice to mimic. The only thing Lux can’t control is his _lust..._ which happens to reflect emotion and fuck up his state of being out of his control as it is already, even without compulsion.

 

Lux is a mimesis because of the nature of a reflection who _happens_ to also be _another_ reflection. Reflection of Narcissus which Liam now fully understands that he was reflecting on his mortality now that Lux has completely broken it down.

 

The fact that he looks _exactly like his old image_ just makes the whole reflection thing that much more confusing to people. No one would think reflection mean “thought”. The first thing they’d think “mirror” but… nowhere is Lux’s name does is say he’s a fucking reflection in a mirror.

 

Part of his actual name is “Think,” which ironically… no one stopped to think he was already perfectly normal.

 

“The universe is really sick.” Liam shakes his head.

 

“Isn’t it?” Lux nods in agreement.

 

“I never really “opened up” to them like how they think. One random day, I just had my first _public_ outburst and they thought I finally learned to be a demon. There were a few people I could always be myself around. It’s not a bad as it sounds. I snuck out to different places in Lust by myself all the time.”

 

“Like where?”

 

“Well one day, I was just _sick_ of being around my family. So I waited until Ava and the twins went back to their own home on the surface and Ace and G were asleep and snuck out of the house and got a nice, calm breath of _fire_ for a while. Went to the skatepark. Cause I’d seen people do it on TV and it looked really fun. I dug a hole the side of our house and made a skateboard out of stone and I’d just skate all night when no one else was there… and I’d do that every night.”

 

“You _thought_ no one else was there.” Ari shoots up out of the clouds in front of them, making Liam jump in surprise. Lux rolls his eyes.

 

“Oh yeah, Ari was _stalking_ me so--”

 

“I wasn’t _stalkin’_ you, bitch. You were in _my domain_.” Ari leaps forward as he rolls and pounces on top of Lux, laughing and rolling around.

 

 _“Are you trying to fuck me?”_ Lux laughs when Ari straddles him, climbing over him instead and gearing to do something that friends really _don’t_ do until Ari kicks him off in revulsion before Lux can settle in his lap.

 

“You sickening _pervert,”_ He scoffs.

 

Liam laughs too, covering his face with his arm when Ari’s tail whips behind him as his wings suddenly sharpen out behind him and thrust once, sending him up before he dives back through the clouds bewteen them with a soft whisper of fluff in the air.

 

Liam thinks Lux is hyper-sexualised like that because he hangs out with erotic Gods here in Lust. He’s almost certain that Lux wasn’t like that when he was younger. He can just tell from the way he is with Ari, who clearly does _not_ like it going that far and has known Lux since way before he lost his virtue.

 

 _“Stupid bird,”_ Lux mumbles, brushing through his hair.

 

“You met him there?” Liam smiles as he brushes the black feathers off the back of his hair for him.

 

Lux nods, dusting off himself with all the feathers all over him before they both lay back down again.

 

“He was only like 3 years old but birds obviously age really fast so he looked about 10 years older than what he actually was. Just like me. Ari sped through his adolescence and now his adulthood will be very slow. So he’s aging with me… meaning not at all.”

 

No _wonder_ Ari and his sibling knew Nars. Considering everything Lux has told him about him, Liam _really_ wants to ask Ari what else he remembers about him aside from the fact that he disappeared a lot. Since his dad was good friends with him, Liam imagines Ari spent a lot of time in his house.

 

“I think I had only been alive for a year when we met by ourselves.” Lux rambles on.

 

“The first time we saw each other was obviously insanely chaotic like he said so we hadn’t ever been face to face before. He said he used to watch me for hours before I knew I was even being watched. When he finally approached me, I was _terrified_.”

 

“You thought he was gonna tattle?” Liam smiles.

 

“No, I couldn’t give a shit about that. No one else had ever seen me act… like _myself_ but Xhane and my twin sister. I thought he’d be afraid of seeing me moving around by myself.”

 

“What did you do?”

 

“I just… stared at him, frozen in _shock_ but he wasn’t freaked out. He didn’t even have to say that he knew I was just like him. Younger than what I appeared but way more conscious for my apparent age. He just gave me one of his skateboards without a word so I wouldn’t have to use my raggedy one anymore… and we instantly became best friends. He never forced his lust on me cause he was just a child. Children don’t sin. When a child dies suddenly - especially an infant - their souls go to Limbo because they are free of sin and filth. Limbo isn’t really hell, it’s like a… place between heaven almost. So when I was with kids, I was at peace. I didn’t have to pretend around him. As time went on, I got more comfortable talking to him like I did with Xhane. They were the only ones I ever talked to besides my sister for a really long time.”

 

“You didn’t talk to anyone else normally for _years?”_ Liam repeats incredulously. “Not even Antonia and Alivia?”

 

Lux shakes his head no.

 

“Didn’t you know something was wrong?”

 

“Of course. I only talked to Xhane and Ari because I trusted them. My sister told me not too talk to anyone else.”

 

“Why?”

 

“If anyone else knew what I was, they’d be terrified. They thought I was just a _reflection_ Liam. Imagine what would happen if one random day, everyone’s reflections suddenly stopped behaving like how they’re supposed to? My siblings would’ve had the same reaction. Think about it. If one day on Earth, no one’s reflection did what it was supposed to anymore. There would be a global panic. Like _‘Oh my fucking God, THEY’RE ALL ALIVE!’,_ ” Lux pretends to imitate how everyone would panic.

 

_“We have to shatter all of the mirrors!”_

 

Liam falls back on the ground, laughing his ass off in Lux’s arm. He’s a really good actor.

 

“ _Oh my God please tell me you are lying about all this!”_

 

Lux shakes his head as he shakes in hysterics. Liam switches into a news reporter’s voice.

 

_“News just-in, there have been a MASSIVE number of mirror MASSACRES world-wide…”_

 

Their heads press into each other as they lose their breath.

 

 _“This just in,”_ Liam continues, _“BREAKING News.”_

 

 _“Jesus my RIBS, PLEASE STOP,”_ Lux almost gags, pushing Liam away as they cry laughing.

 

Finally, they both calm down, wiping their faces as collapsing on their backs with deep breaths.

 

“Holy shit Lux… that’s insane.” Liam shakes his head but Lux only shrugs.

 

“I was used to it so it wasn’t really a big deal. It just… took a while.”

 

“So when did you first talk to someone? Like the very first time.” Liam squints.

 

“My sister Morosa. She knew I could talk on my own. She told me I could do whatever the fuck I wanted.” Lux snorts.

 

Liam frowns. He can’t imagine that being a very good role model so Lux at such an impressionable age.

 

“She’s _probably_ where I got my potty mouth from. I was only 2 years into my life when she started taking me out to teach me how to use my powers so I was like a swearing 2 year old with her.” He snorts.

 

“I only seen her once every few months though because she was always travelling… like this wild and free-spirit. She took me to different _locus amoenus_ above Lust like up here where it was no one else but the two of us for thousands of miles and nothing could fuck up my powers and just let me have it. It’s illegal to do stuff like that in Lust. We’ve got the crispiest hellfire in hell yet, we’re not allowed to play with it. This is the most boring place to be.”

 

Of course Lux liked playing with fire.

 

“Like go supernova?”

 

With his mass… he could see how that’d be illegal. He’d kill everyone.

 

“Yeah… that’s _super illegal_.” Lux laughs as he nods.

 

“But she didn’t care. I could do whatever I wanted up in the ledges above Lust like we are now. Cause the clouds catch all the fire and it just storms harder below us. She loved watching me do it so I kind of became obsessed with impressing people. If you can impress Morosa, then you know you’re pretty fucking deadly.”

 

Liam smiles too. She doesn’t sound so bad the way Lux talks about her. Unlike Ace, she actually sounds like a _normal_ big sister. He listens to Lux raving about his sister, seeing how his eyes gleam with his words as opposed to dull when he talks about his brothers. He clearly adores her.

 

Zayn was always glad he had a bunch of sisters too. Aside from the guys he hung out with in his small circle of friends that he _didn’t_ hook up with, with Harry and Liam, most of his friends were girls as well. He even got them to help him make a cheer squad just for Liam.

 

Liam always used to think Zayn felt calm with girls. Maybe Lux does too. He talks about all the girls in his life with respect. Well… his other sister, he writes off as a whore but… maybe she is a whore, who knows. Nothing wrong with sexual liberation.

 

Liam likes hearing him talk about his personal life so openly. He wishes Zayn would more often.

 

“The only demon she ever knew of that could control hellfire like me was our brother Ira. All of hell has hellfire but in Lust, it’s the most difficult to control because you’re basically trying to control the thunderstorm. She used to take him up here when he was younger and do the same thing she did with me. Showed me _everything._ I thought I could do anything if I put everything I am into it… like I could _fly_ if I wanted to. She never compelled me or forced me to act like someone else. I was free like her for a while. She was the only one who didn’t hate being around me. She says it’s because we’re twins but… I think I just reminded her of being with Narcissus.”

 

Lux’s face falls a little.

 

“No one else talked about him with me outside of school the way she did.” he says seriously.

 

“They were all so sad that he left. They make it sound like this huge loss but I think Morosa was the only one that was actually happy for him. Cause he was free like how she was. She told me one day I’d meet him and be free too.”

 

His mouth folds into a tight smile at Liam.

 

“So I take it no one ever knew you what you guys were doing up here?”

 

“Nope.” He pops the P, “Why would they care? She took me off their hands for a while. They thought she was just teaching me about my lithin powers but… she was teaching me so much more than how to be a demon. She was the only one that spoke about life outside of Lust and the Underworld. She always told me this was my life, and I could do whatever _I_ wanted with it and _be_ whatever I wanted but that was obviously impossible to believe when I came back home.”

 

Liam shakes his head a little. He’s glad he had an escape from the nightmare of being compelled everyday. Up here, in his pleasant place. Liam wonders what the others like this are like.

 

“I thought one day she was gonna take me all over the world with her... like when I was older but then we learned about the curse in school and I knew it would probably never happen. Xhane always goes to the surface to see graveyards but she can’t stay up there for that long or she’ll suffocate. I couldn’t at all unless I stole a body from somewhere. I wanted to go with my sister every time she’d leave but she never thought I was ready for possession. She said I would be when I was more mature and… now I know she was talking about the bloody c _urse_.” Lux rolls his eyes.

 

“Xhane told me she’d break the curse for me but…” Lux grimaces a little, shaking his head.

 

“I don’t want her to give up her _demon_ for me to be a God… this isn’t her problem.”

 

Liam’s eyes widen when he says that, more to himself than to Liam. His best friend is going to be a GODDESS. She could get literally get him out of hell if she wanted to. _She could take away his curse._

 

“Why wouldn’t you want her to help you?” Liam blurts as he sits up.

 

“Xhane can stop ALL of this--”

 

 _“Xhane_ isn’t doing shit Liam.” Lux cuts him off. “She’s not selling her fucking soul and changing who she is for me or anyone _else._ She was born a demon and that’s how she’s _staying_ and that’s the _last_ I’m ever hearing this nonsense about _Gods.”_

 

His eyes darken when he says that so Liam drops it entirely. The notion of selling off part of yourself is obviously really personal to him. It’s the reason he’s alive and it’s only given them trouble.

 

Liam leans back down again, holding the inside of his cheeks in.

 

“So… if the curse got broken, you’d go live on the surface with your sister?” Liam says tentatively. He’s fully aware that means he would be seducing humans and sending them to torment in hell. Cause that’s what demons do on the surface.

 

“I know what you’re thinking… but my sister _isn’t_ evil.” Lux says seriously as he looks at him.

 

“Not any more than anyone else. G always tries to make it sound like she just kills innocent people because she can but she’s not that kind of demon. Innocent souls don’t get torment. The more you sin, the better your chances of a demon coming to you are. The vain, materialists, those who deceive, those who envy others. The ostentatious. Narcissists. Those who act superiority. Anti-sociopaths. These are all _sinners._ Morosa is only attracted to the immoral. She doesn’t hurt _all_ of them. Some just get laid and get their karma however they dealt it. That’s what she taught me. She doesn’t just go around murdering old ladies and babies… she always seduced people that are like… rapists and murderers. Those kinds of people are usually sociopaths. Like pedophiles…” Lux grimaces at that one.

 

“Those who sin suffer the consequence of whatever they indulged in. Whether it’s from a demon or a God. Humans are just too _stupid_ to recognise they aren’t the centre of the damn universe. They think they know everything when in reality, they know nothing and fill their minds with idiotic nonsense and raise children with the same corrupt way of living. Demons aren’t out to _get_ you _._ We’re out to sin. Humans just happen to be the sinners. Earth is full of it, just like in hell. We’re not as different as humans _think_ they are. You sin, there’s a consequence. That’s just how life works. I didn’t make the rules. Although… I do tend to break them but whatever.”

 

So Morosa is the one who actually taught Lux about morals. Except Lux completely disregarded whatever he learned from her because he got a body and ran with the fucking wind. Liam understands why Lux doesn’t was him to meet her.

 

She probably doesn’t have any regard for human life. She’s clearly the one Lux got his views on humanity from. But they’re not wrong.

 

“What was her virtue?”

 

“Hope and faith. She was two because Ira was pure hatred.”

 

That’s pretty good even though Liam shivers a little when he thinks about Ira. Hope and kindness are the best virtues, taking a positive view of the future and that good trumps bad, believing in what is right.

 

Morosa strikes down evil with their own evil.

 

There’s a grave new realisation chilling in him now. According to Ari, she has _no idea_ about Lux or Liam being here.

 

She would… without a _doubt_ … kill Liam.

 

Even though Harry has his theories, he’s never actually asked Zayn was he was really closing the portal. All he told Liam was that there was something he never finished and keeping his demons in hell. Maybe that doesn’t just mean his own demons. Maybe he means… the demons he was friends with.

 

One of kids at the park said they seen Zayn walking to the tower last month. That’s where Luke’s dad lives.

 

“What’s wrong?” Lux brings Liam out of his head when he zones out for a while.

 

“Huh?” Liam blinks over at him.

 

“You stopped asking me questions.”

 

Liam snorts as he looks down. Lux’s weird enjoyment with Liam asking him questions is making him run out of things he thinks he can ask without being too mosy.

 

“When did you talk to Xhane?”

 

“We were always together because my other sister, Invidia was married to her father at the time.”

 

“She wasn’t freaked out that you could talk?”

 

“She was only like 2 or 3 years old Liam. What toddler would care? She always knew I could talk on my own anyways.”

 

“How?”

 

“I told you children are much smarter than adults. It was like this stupid riddle no one could figure out.” He snorts to himself.

 

“I knew she was the only one aware that I was just like her. It was like this secret we exchanged when we first saw each other.”

 

Liam snorts. Toddlers smarter than thousand year old demons.

 

“At my sister’s wedding, shortly after I arrived, Xhane came up to me where I was off alone when no one else was around and she asked me why I wouldn’t talk. I just shrugged.” He shrugs now.

 

“Then what happened?”

 

“She told me I didn’t have to talk if I didn’t want to… she didn’t want to force what she wanted on me. And… we just became best friends too.” He smiles at Liam, who smiles too. Simple enough.

 

Lux looks up at the marsh then.

 

“I was always at her house when my sister was married to her dad. I’d just watch her read and show me weird spells.”

 

“Can demons do magic?” Liam asks so he can get this stupid murk off his chest.

 

Lux shakes his head no, effectively shutting down the theory that whatever started the necromancy crisis _wasn’t_ a demon.

 

“Her nan might be the source of all necromancy but she doesn’t have the magnitude of power of an actual witch with her kakos.”

 

Liam is gonna stop considering that word as synonymous with evil. Kakos is pure darkness that _lives and breathes._ It’s more like a dark soul than anything else. A _demon_ soul. Only because Lux considers her riddance of it as selling her soul, which she technicality would be doing. Soul-selling clearly doesn’t sit well with Liam for obvious reasons.

 

“I was more like her test dummy for potions. I never really talked that much. I officially met her cousin without there being an adult around at the skatepark on one of my secret, nightly outings not too long after Xhane. I knew who he was already, it just took a while for me to talk to him. He started teaching me how to control hellfire. He can manipulate the storm better than anyone I know. I didn’t have to talk to them for them to understand me. We just… fit. The only one of my siblings that actually helped me learn how to do anything else was Morosa. She was the only one that didn’t treat me like a reflection. I could _always_ talk to her. They all kept my secret.”

 

“Wow…” Liam smiles a little.

 

Even though his childhood sounds like a fucking nightmare as his own family didn’t really care about him and he didn’t really talk that much for a while, his friendship with Ari and Xhane and even his sister sounds just as pure and light-hearted as Liam’s with Zayn and Harry. He’s glad Lux had them.

 

“When me and Ari got busted being out that late, I just acted like I didn’t know anything like always. Everyone knew who I was. I wasn’t allowed to be outside alone. So Ari would just act like he brought me out to play or something. It started getting harder to sneak out every night after that because my brother compelled me to never use a doorway in the marsh without permission so we started planning methods of not getting caught. And then I showed him that I could impersonate people in like and sound. It was… really fun for a while. I had this secret part of me or something.”

 

“Clark Kent.” Liam smiles. Lux raises his eyebrows.

 

“Superman had a secret identity that everyone in Metropolis were too dumb to figure out. He’d just put on some glasses and a tie and he’d suddenly be Clark instead of Superman. Same face though.”

 

Lux snorts, looking up again.

 

“Yeah well… my secret identity got blown up when I got to the bigger kids in school… literally.”

 

Liam frowns a little. That doesn’t sound very good.

 

“Who’d you burn up?”

 

Lux laughs as he looks at Liam smiling up at the marsh now.

 

“I didn’t burn anyone.”

 

“Was it Luke?” Liam guesses as he tilts his head over. Lux smiles shaking his head no.

 

“Nah… we were actually friends before believe it or not. I don’t even remember his name. He kept calling me names to see if I’d react with a pack of losers. I wasn’t use to anyone talking to me like that. The entire room almost burned down but I didn’t hurt anyone. I made him say my name properly and told him I was going to incinerate his entire family so… I got in a lot of trouble. Threatening to kill a 10 year old doesn’t look very good. Anything past _9_ can eat it as far as I’m concerned.”

 

Liam’s mouth falls open. _That_ sounds like a Lux he knows.

 

“It goes without saying my facade of being obedient and tamed was completely flipped. They thought they had some kind of genius breakthrough… _“Eureka… he speaks!”,”_ Lux cheers mockingly.

 

“ _... “But he’s fucking mental,”.”_ He adds with a laugh before he looks at Liam again.

 

“They thought they’d finally taught me how to act like a demon. So I just let them have their little victory.”

 

“You talked to everyone then?”

 

“No… I wasn’t really used to talking around other people and everyone was afraid of me so no one really wanted to talk to me anyways. No one could even hear my _voice_ . I couldn’t hear my own voice unless I was mimicking someone. It was very gradual. I didn’t really like being around teenagers…. they’re so goddamn _emotional._ I only spoke when spoken to still and reacted when someone provoked me. Xhane always told me to just be myself but, it had to happen slowly.” He shrugs.

 

“My brothers are all fucking _idiots_. That’s why they’re oblivious.”

 

“Man…” Liam shakes his head slowly. “What were you doing in the house alone? Before they met you.”  

 

Lux’s face goes blank then for a while as he stops blinking, doing his freaky way of reflecting as he watches himself up in the raining marsh.

 

“I… don’t remember.” He finally says as he squints.

 

“I spent a lot of time floating in the marsh. Breathing's easier underwater."

 

Liam lets his words settle inside him as they begin to draw a picture like a movie in his mind of his past, see his words come to life, animated like him, with his voice.

 

"You can breathe underwater?"

 

"Without human lungs, I can breathe almost anywhere without a body." Lux nods with a hidden smile. Liam gets so amazed by such simple things, it's hard not to enjoy being around him and talking about such frivolity that is the nature of a demon... considering who _he_ is. 

 

"Aether exists beyond the bounds of every element Liam. That includes water, just like up here in this fire. We can breathe in aether. The marsh is _full_ of lymph."

 

"Lymph?"

 

"Pure water." Lux elaborates, "Narcissus came from a nymph called Liriope. She plugged her body with Cephissus so she could bare his child. Cephissus filled Liriope until she became lymph as his river mixed with her sea and purified a marsh full of what they called narcissus, where Nars was begotten. Since he was drowning, he sprang from the marsh and walked on land instead of swimming in his bath."

 

That was very much so the most beautiful way Lux has ever described sex to Liam. He didn't make it dirty and outright say they had sex in explicit detail like usual. He spoke of it as something pure because they made something pure.

 

They made  _love_. And that love gave birth to Narcissus.

 

That love  _is n_ arcissism. And he... rejected it.

 

To reject yourself really is hate.

 

The myth that birth narcissism to the world was the purest form of self-love there is, as pure of lymph itself. But... the myth Liam's always heard is so ugly, being a narcissist is frowned upon in the society he lives in. But in actuality... it's a  _beautiful_  form of love.

 

This actuality is Zayn AND Lux's  _reality._  The marsh is why they're even alive now. And it's why they're cursed. And Liam finally sees now how they're truly connected. They're not just two being on different sides of a giant mirror. They share an entire fucking reality of their own that no one else ever will.

 

Who they are.

 

"That's AMAZING." Liam smiles. And so now he knows why narcissus springs from the marsh to this very day still. He's reborn every day in a new colour. Just like his flowers.

 

Lux laughs again at Liam's endless amazement, not even realising Liam's tripping balls next to him off some wicked epiphanies here.

 

"Where did the sugary rose water come from then?" He wonders aloud. There must be a reason Zayn tastes so delicious unless that's just part of his attraction he was born with. But for some reason... Liam doesn't think he was born with that. Narcissus that it. He feels like he knows the answer but... maybe Lux can tell him so he knows for sure.

 

"I dunno why Zayn sweats rose water." Lux shrugs, effectively reminding Liam that he doesn't really know everything and he's just going off what other people have told him about Narcissus.

 

"The sugar comes from the nectar in the narcissus. Sometimes the water tastes like fruit juice. Or honey water. Or sugar water. Which is what butterflies eat so that's why daffodils shaped like these ones in particular are called butterfly narcissus, more than just from the resemblence. Butterflies like to lick them. They taste pretty good I guess. G likes to eat it too, that's all he eats." Lux catches on in the air and crushes it into dust.

 

It's weird thinking about G technically eating the souls of plants, thinking plants have aether and life like that at all. Even weird thinking he probably wouldn't mind getting a... _taste..._ of Zayn either. The kind of taste with a wink attached to it.

 

He doubts he's immuned to Zayn's attraction. Lux definietly isn't.

 

They watch the flower blow away now.

 

"Some say these kind of daffodils confused butterflies."

 

"Because they're shaped like them?" Liam snorts, imagining a butterfly seeing the flower and thinking it was another butterfly. Lux nods.

 

"They'd fall in love with them as if it was their lover. And they'd kiss."

 

"Kiss like this?" Liam leans over Lux suddenly, making his stomach lurk as he jumps before Liam bats his eyelashes over his, mimicking a butterfly kiss. 

 

Lux quickly squashes his alarm at such a bizarre thing as he pushes him off with furrowed brows.

 

"What the fuck are you _doing?"_ He hisses at him, grabbing his churning gut again.

 

"That's a _butterfly_ kiss." Liam laughs as his confused expression, seeing his cheeks tinting.

 

"I don't _like_ butterflies." Lux's tone sharpens as he frowns at the marsh, turning away from Liam with his arms crossed over his stomach, holding it in.

 

 _Okay_.

 

He thought that'd  make him laugh. It always made Zayn laugh. 

 

"Sorry...I was just kidding with you." Liam sighs wistfully, getting reminded that he doesn't really know Lux that well so he probably shouldn't mess with him like that... even though he does it to Liam constantly. He only pisses Lux off when he does it back to him and it's fucking weird how he can deal it but not _take_ being teased. 

 

Then he remembers his friends told Liam that Lux has OCD about being touched, realising why Lux jerks away from him. 

 

So... no more touching Lux like that. It pisses him off.

 

He looks at their flowing marsh, thinking about all the butterflies that were probably attracted to and maybe even fell in love Narcissus.

 

Lux rolls his eyes, looking back at the marsh now in silence while Liam thinks about everything he just learned about the marsh and Nars.

 

Nars wasn't a rose. He was a daffodil. Liam thinks he might know where the rose was coming from.

 

"So you just hung out on the roof huh?" Liam resumes normal conversation after a long while of quiet. 

 

"l could see the sky from here." He finally says after the pregnant pause, finally cooling off calm again.

 

He slowly unclenches his stomach now as his fingers spread together, relaxed as he closes his eyes.

 

"All my time was spent floating across our rooftop in _locis_ like this, wandering around in abandoned pleasant places. My toes never lifted off the clouds. I knew how to swim above gravity and thread aether like water on my own. Before anyone else met me, I was completely unwritten and unexplained. The first moments of my life was the most peaceful time I’d ever spent alone.”

 

Liam can imagine him wading around on the roof without a single task at hand. And he can imagine his terror when it was all ripped out of him.

 

“We had to learn about him in class. And I found out he left me here because he was chasing after a fucking _star_ . I thought the entire notion was so stupid. He went through all that trouble, wasted all his _time_ for something that was fucking _impossible_ for him to ever have.”

 

Liam looks at the watery sky, seeing their distorted images, far far away.

 

“I never thought I’d ever understand his stupidity.” Lux looks down at Liam again, watching him watch them in the sky like he’s watching a scene from their movie.

 

“But then… I met you. And you really fucking annoy me sometimes but it doesn't change that now everything seems totally worth it.”  He smiles. Liam looks at Lux with a sinking heart.

 

He doesn’t think he’s ever heard more bittersweet words. It’s the sweetest thing Lux has ever said to him but the type of sweet that gives you a toothache. Cause it’s the recognition that he finally understands now why Nars hated him so after years of wondering why the hell he left like that. Lux has felt what Zayn feels for Liam. And now, he’s in the way of it all _again._

 

His existence came between them and now he’s trying to take up as little room between them as possible. Even at the expense of his own life.

 

“That’s how I know those are my words. I wanted to make sure you were okay before I even got here so I can assure you, if anyone was compelling me, it wouldn’t make much of a difference. I just want you to be happy and safe again. So, the past has to stay in the past. It’s not as bad as it sounds. It’ll be like when I first got here, when I didn’t know who I was or where I was. I was in complete _rhathymia_ when I was alone _._ When I’m gone, I’ll be there again and you’ll be safe from here and you’ll be with Zayn. So it’s not such an awful ending. _”_

 

“What's rhathymia mean?” Liam flicks at petals on the clouds as he wipes his wet face off.

 

“It means my temper was perfectly even and light in my chest until other demons got in my vicinity and fucked it forever. Purging me will give me back into a perfect state of being.”

 

Nothing.

 

No, Lux doesn’t enjoy feeling nothing. He probably doesn’t actually enjoy being alone either, he clearly likes _talking_. But he’d take nothing over feeling everything all at once.

 

Sometimes death can be a release from life rather than the end, especially if all you feel is pain all your life and other unwanted urges like they have. But there’s so much that exists in the universe, so much more than _pain._ _Choosing_ death over it all is like choosing to spend a million pounds on one pair of shoes - a complete and total waste of something grand: life.

 

Liam wants to show Lux as much as he can while he’s here. Maybe they can go to a toy shop. Anything. He can get him to see the light instead of all that’s dark in their world being the only answer.

 

“When they all barged into my personal space and fucked up my neutral state of being with their terror, my pit has been pretty unstable ever since. I was forced to react. I wasn't _bothering_ anyone if they would’ve just left me the fuck alone. I mean… he fucking LEFT ME THERE. What the hell was I supposed to do?”

 

The heat from his body spikes for a few seconds but it evens out just as fast. His face stays neutral despite his pit flaring with the emotion in his body for him.

 

“I was pretty peeved about the entire ordeal for a while the more I learned about him but I don't even give a fuck about any of it anymore.” he sighs.

 

“You don't?” Liam squints.

 

“No… actually meeting him was _nothing_ like how I’d thought it be.”

 

“What did you think it was gonna be like?”

 

“I dunno,” Lux snorts as he shrugs.

 

“You read about this royal douche you’re designed after and see how everyone talks about him as if he’s this heart-breakingly beautiful _love_ God. _Self_ loving God. And then you actually meet him in person and the whole thing is a big… _lie_.” He murmurs, shaking his head.

 

“He’s not this powerful God who achieved immortality by the sheer force of his own mighty faculty. He’s just… some _kid_ . Doesn’t even know anything about his life or where he came from or how he got there. This scared little kid that I’ve seen my entire _life_ but never actually seen until I looked at myself and actually saw someone there. It was _crazy_. He was--”

 

“Just like you?” Liam smiles. Lux shakes his head.

 

“No Liam, he was fucking _dying_.” Lux says seriously, shattering his dreamy moment of meeting Zayn.

 

Oh… _right_ he woke up in a dying body. Liam supposes that wasn’t a very dreamy night for them.

 

“Obviously that meeting was way more horrific than the others. Actually hearing his voice for myself was… indescribable in the moment. Dwelling on the past now is useless at this point. He went and he found you again. That was all he wanted. So that’s what I want too. It’s not because anyone compelled me, I promise.”

 

Liam looks at Lux again as he realises something.

 

Nars had to have purged him and _then_ left. So that means… he saw him face to face, _in person,_ for at least a minute or two.

 

Liam can’t imagine him leaving without saying _anything_ at all to Lux. Maybe he doesn’t remember the day he was born but Nars said something to him that he was repeating. There’s probably a reason Lux hates repeating himself now from that alone. It’s an annoying way to communicate to people.

 

Maybe he was the one that called him Lux.

 

“Do you remember that day?”

 

“Who remembers being born?”

 

Good point.

 

“I don’t exactly remember the exact _day_ . But I remember being confused. And I only even remember that much now because I was reminded of the same terrifying feeling of not knowing where I was when I woke up in a body not too long ago. And that was _the actual_ worst day of my life.”

 

“What was… _wrong_ with you that night?”

 

He knows Lux will tell him this time. He’s pretty much told his whole life story now… might as well come full circle.

 

Lux closes his eyes.

 

“Aside from the starving _animal_ trying to claw itself out of me…. I suppose it was the same as the day I was born.”

 

Liam closes his eyes too, turning over as they lay there on their backs. They seem to do that a lot.

 

“I didn’t know where I was… or _who_ I was… or what was happening to me. We were covered in all these deep wounds and bleeding profusely. I tried to singe them closed and it was the first time my fire… _hurt_ me.” His face pinches a little as he recalls it.

 

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt more pain in my life. I incinerated his entire body trying to replenish it and it only made it _worse_. I couldn’t stop the burning or bleeding. It was just killing myself even more on top of the animal trying to get out… I didn’t know what to do.”

 

Lux tsks as he shakes his head. Liam can’t even _imagine_ how horrifying that was.

 

“There wasn’t any other hellfire anywhere near me on the outside and I felt completely - _suffocatingly_ _powerless_. I couldn’t _breathe_ properly… it so was much worse than meeting my brothers. Zayn was actually _dying…_ and I was terrified I was gonna die too. If he dies, _I die_ except I’m not immortal. I may be hard to kill but I’m most vulnerable when I’m hungry. I was too weak to heal myself.”

 

“What did you do?”

 

“All I knew was I was about to become a beast and _die_ if I didn’t find something to eat as soon as possible. So I followed the familiar smell of fire to find it and got your friend Niall instead, calling for help underneath that burning house. He was in so much _pain_ …” Lux winces as Liam looks at him again, like he’s feeling it all over.

 

“Xhane and Ari have both always had bodies full of emotions they used to describe to me that I’d never understand. She would make all these weird potions for me to drink that were supposed to give me _real_ sensory perception. I tried this potion of mermaids breath once for reverence. Twilight flower for hope. Elixir from a wounded heart for… true love.” He frowns a little at that one. Liam can probably guess why she wanted Lux to feel real love.

 

“But demons like me aren’t capable of feeling truly empathetic emotions anyways so,” He shrugs.

 

“Nothing ever worked. All I had was mimpathy. I could mimic it all and I recognised it in others but… never really felt anything at all before this happened.”

 

“Lucky you.” Liam murmurs.

 

“Yeah, _no shit,”_ Lux snorts. “I was glad there were things even I would _never_ feel without a body. Like physical pain. They used to tell me there were feelings that took up the entire _universe_ that I’d never touch. Now, I get to feel it all. The longer I’m in Zayn’s body… the more I feel what he feels...” His voice trails off as the corner of his lip quirks up a bit.

 

“Being in his body isn’t a _total_ nightmare, I suppose. Sex feels… _different_ with different people that's for sure.” He murmurs.

 

A small rumble of thunder underneath Liam vibrates through him as he gulps a little thick lump in his throat. Lux goes on.

 

“When I found Niall, I could feel all his bones breaking with me. It was the first time I tried to drain a real person and I was complete _shit_. My sister taught me how to drag out their pain into me, physical or otherwise, through the vulnerability of their emotion when they’re at their peak - which is really easy during sex cause your peak is just giving you an orgasm. Then manipulate their emotion into whatever I wanted but, I had to drain his pain into me before I could eat. But he was so _innocent_. I’d never… _killed_ _anyone_ before and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.”

 

Liam believes him. His siblings are way older than him. They really _are_ more experienced whether he likes admitting that or not. Even if he’s way more powerful than them, he’s still just a kid.

 

“I’d never even been a _beast_ before. It was all so terrifying… I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t eat an innocent soul and become a full-blown monster. I ran away before I did. I inflicted enough pain on him to gain a _little_ more vim so at least my body could heal but… I was still _so hungry._ I couldn’t eat anyone, it was too much pain involved. I figured I’d just starve to death or become an animal for the rest of my life in this fucked up world I woke up in and that would just be the end of it.”

 

“You came to me because you were scared.”

 

Lux doesn’t say anything to him for a moment as they look at one another’s blurred forms in the water.

 

“I dunno why I came to you.” He shrugs.

 

“I didn’t know where else to go. There were so many paths begging me to follow them… I just took the one that lead to you. I thought I wanted you because I was hungry but… it couldn’t drain you either. I tried to drain Niall and the beast was ripping itself out of me. I tried to eat an already dead piece of meat that wouldn’t feel _any_ pain but he made me throw it back up. The whole night was such a fucking NIGHTMARE. All I could do was laugh at that point. I kept thinking to myself, _what kind of demon can’t drain someone?_ I couldn’t eat anything without throwing up or losing control of myself…. I was just really fucked up.” He snorts as he shakes his head.

 

“When you touched me…” Lux pauses for a while as he stares into space so Liam nudges his shoulder back into focus.

 

“I dunno,” Lux blinks as he shakes his head a little, snapping out of his brief daze.

 

“It was just like a bomb went off inside with all these images of shit I never thought I’d see. It was like his entire life was exposed to him all of the sudden. I actually _felt_ something that wasn’t totally terrifying… but it _was_ terrifying at the same time. I know I didn’t know who you were… but it felt like I did. I didn’t even know who the fuck _I_ was at that point but I thought I knew you somehow.” He murmurs.

 

“But then you fucking ran away from me before I could figure out who the hell you were. Of course I know why _now_. I was just feeling what he felt. But at the time, it was just something I’d never experienced before and it scared me more than even the beast did… I mean it still kind of does but, I actually like feeling some things now.”

 

Lux looks at Liam again when Liam turns his head to the side.

 

“What?”

 

He doesn’t think he means love. When he can to Liam, he wasn’t getting loving vibes. He was getting _distressed animal_ vibes. Fighting against turning into an actual demonic animal would probably have that effect.

 

As Liam looks into his eyes, he sees a flashback of himself in Lux’s past. The night of the fire.

 

He watched Liam pull up to his house and go inside dragging his filthy legs across the ground, seemingly unsure of how to walk properly as his body twitches a little like he’s being shocked every other second, like he hadn’t fully grasped how to posses Zayn’s body either. He followed Liam up to the door and banged on it, standing perfectly still like a statue as he waits for a few seconds before walking away.

 

It disappears before he can see how he got into his house or what he looked like through Lux’s strange eyes. He said his brother compelled him to never be able to cross thresholds without permission… which sound like something he might’ve got from a dracula movie. Maybe he used a window.

 

Liam blinks as he leans a little closer, like that’ll bring it back.

 

Lux jerks back suddenly when Liam moves, away from him before he comes any closer, eyes darting down to his hands, which makes Liam stop, realising it looks like he’s trying to kiss him like last time. Lux always jerks away from him whenever this happens.

 

There’s an _awkward_ silence before anything else is said.

 

“I was going to try draining again. But… I couldn’t. You were just too innocent. I didn’t want to kill you. I didn’t want to kill _anyone_ that night. I was already in pain. It would’ve hurt me more.” He shrugs, closing whatever window he just had open. Liam frowns a little.

 

“Sorry I pushed you by the way… I just needed to get out of there.”

 

“No,” Liam shakes his head quickly as he frowns, “Seriously, that’s bloody _awful_ . I can’t even fathom how I’d react to waking up, _dying,_ in a completely foreign… _world_.”

 

Lux doesn’t flinch away from him when he touches his arm.

 

He only folds in his lips, keeping his eyes trained on his overlapping hands on his stomach. His typically slow murmur is _pounding_ in his chest, seeping right through his arms for Liam to feel. His hand moves down a little, lightly rubbing his arm comfortingly. His heart doesn’t slow down.

 

“Where did you go when you left?”

 

Lux internally paces himself as he gears to speak again, an indistinct shake in his breath as he inhales once with two languid blinks, flaking tiny flower petals that are crushed up like powder in his lashes still.

 

“Back to where I’d woke up.” He breaths out normal, seemingly forcing his heart to stop beating wildly as it abruptly slows down in the fashion that is nothing short of supernatural.

 

“It was leading me back like a magnet.”

 

“What was?”

 

“The narcissus marsh.”

 

It all came full circle on the equinoctial full moon. Lux came back to Zayn and they both came back to where they first met. And then they met again. Liam wonders if Narcissus got cursed on the equinox too.

 

“I couldn’t resist the attraction to it. I suppose no one can. You come within a few feet of it, it grabs onto you a pulls you in. When I looked at it… ” He smiles.

 

“It was the most _beautiful_ picture I’d ever seen. And then I realised it was _him.”_ His eyes light up again, embers growing in his charging flame.

 

“It was _amazing_.”

 

Liam smiles a little bit.

 

“Yeah, I remember you calling me to rave about it like an _asshole_.” He snorts, shaking his head.

 

Lux moves Liam’s hand off as he jerks his arm up and hits Liam again, laughing with his eyes squeezed close before throwing up his arms in protest.

 

“I was fucking _excited!_ I didn’t have anyone else to talk about it with but Saf! _”_

 

They both laugh now. The situation was so sorry, they could only laugh or cry about it.

 

“So… _yeah_. That’s me in relation to your… uh, Zaynie.” His nods with a tight smile. Liam doesn’t smile now.

 

“I knew who I was after I saw him again. He knew who I was too. They always said he’d come back when he turned 17… which meant after 17 years, I’d meet him. It had finally _happened._ I suppose if I was actually keeping track of how many years had been going by, I wouldn’t have been so blind-sided. But I knew what I had to do to stay alive then. I was scared and excited but… I was _free._ I thought I’d dread the day he got cursed to be back with me, and I _did_ at first but after the hardest night of my life, everything just realigned itself in perfect balance.”

 

Liam’s head stays stuck on them already knowing each other.

 

“I knew humans were supposed to move on and draining them would halt that and send them to torment in the deepest depths of hell instead but… I honestly didn’t give a shit anymore by the third time. The first time I tried to drain someone was… _rough_ but by the second time, I had it pretty tame as long as I just relaxed and let the beast in me have it. I felt a little bad about it at first…”

 

Liam knows he means that. When he told Liam he’d killed someone when they were lying in bed, he had remorse. He didn’t know demons could have remorse for humans at all. It’s times like that when Liam wonders how much of Lux is Lux and how much is Zayn. Or if there's really a difference at all.

 

“But there’s this sick joy you get out of having sex with someone you hate. I really enjoyed ripping apart Louis after what he said to you so, my remorse became morose delectation _._ Finding my new enemies was easy after Louis.”  

 

That’s his twin sin. Enjoying someone’s torture… especially that of an immoral soul. _Now_ he sounds like a demon. He and Louis seem like they got on well here just fine now.

 

“But anyways,” Lux moves on with a sigh. “Now… I know that pretty much _no one_ in life is ever free. And bodies are shit. And Gods can all go eat a musty old dick.”

 

Lux frowns apologetically towards Liam.

 

“I didn’t mean to fuck up your entire life like this.” He gets really serious now.

 

“I think like I’ve learned more from all this then I’ve ever learned from anything. Especially from you. Actions have consequences. I thought you could just take a bath in the Acheron and you’d be okay but, that wouldn’t work. I mean,” he rolls his eyes.

 

“It _can_ but…” He brushes his hair back in frustration as he fights against something internally. His eyes _cloud_ again, seemingly without his knowledge. And Liam realises those really _aren't_ tears. He doesn’t understand how compulsion works but it seems like certain words trigger it. Saying anything that alludes to him staying alive. Which means...he _was_ compelled and he doesn’t realise those aren’t really his words.

 

“I can’t stay.” He blinks once and the opaque cloud is brushed away before it can take over his whole eye and stun him again.

 

“As long as I’m alive now, you’re suffering in hell one way or another with Zayn. And so am I. After everything I did, this is just textbook _karma_ really.”

 

He sits back again.

 

“Everyone's actions have consequences. That includes demons too.”

 

There’s a collision now that Lux has shoved everything he has out of him. Well, not everything but way more than what Liam was expecting to _ever_ get from him. Especially in one day.

 

He just showed him the centre of their everything with a cloak over it, broke it all the way down, reconstructed it and showed Liam that _he_ was under the cloak. Lux may not value human life totally, but he values Liam’s even more than his own. And Liam’s life is also Zayn.

 

And all this happened because a boy made of flowers was in love with a star.

 

“Do you think Narcissus really did do this to himself?”

 

Lux shrugs.

 

“Dunno. A lot of people wanted him… but a lot of people wanted Adara too. Everyone always reaches for the stars but, they don’t usually reach back for you. He wasn’t the only one that could see the stars but he was the only one who she liked to touch. He wore her all over his skin and eyes proudly… which is why he looked like that the majority of his life. Nemesis is also known as Invidia like my sister Dia. The _envy_ of humanity. Maybe someone was just envious him. I know you don’t like endings but… sometimes you just have to let go of the past.”

 

Liam knows this isn’t the end of their story. In fact, this is just the beginning of a very long journey.

 

Something happened to Narcissus that no one else here knows and it’s up there in Zayn’s memory somewhere that they have to find. He’s not letting go of the past ever so Liam isn’t going to either.

 

Even a star’s memory glows in the sky up there in the leftover dust above the marsh. Liam could feel tears the moment he stepped into it and he knows they weren’t all from him. It felt overwhelmingly sad to see the marsh.

 

He knows how to go back into his memory as well. Well… not totally. The amnesia is still clamped in him so his memory gets lost and he can’t control his clairvoyance for some dumb reason but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the answer. There’s entire world’s he can explore. _Universe’s_ yet to discover.

 

Their whole universe is in them. They just have to look deeper inside to see it all. Maybe do a little soul searching outside too.

 

“What… happens after I leave?” Liam asks slowly.

 

“After you leave, we’re closing the portal. Some things in between happen, you’re all clean, Zayn goes back to the surface. The end. _”_ Lux keeps it vague but the impact of the collision hits Liam’s bones again when it _finally_ fully resonates that Lux is saving both Liam and Zayn but no one is saving him.

 

Liam sits up and lifts Lux up with him before Lux can pull away from him as his eyes bulge when Liam gathers him in his arms, making his back curve in, in shock from the burst of tingles inside his body erupt all over him. Even if he was in Zayn’s body for 100 years. He’ll _never_ find what Liam does to Zayn’s body as anything ordinary.

 

It’s one thing to joke around about it but whenever he touches him like this, the loss of control over himself racks through him like acid and makes him want to puke again. He doesn’t want to be an asshole yell at Liam and tell him not to touch him like this but… controlling himself is compromised with skin contact and an emotional Liam.

 

His arms raise up automatically by his head as his heart _jumps_ , looking down at Ari slowly coming up, poking his head up through a cloud near with amusement in his eyebrows.

 

 _‘Hug him stupid,’_  Ari mouths at him. Lux makes a face at, which makes Ari roll his eyes, wiggling his bull ring before throwing up a peace sign, signaling that he’s just going to Xhane’s now and he’ll see them later before he disappears below the clouds with a final flap of his tail.

 

His hands come back down carefully, hesitating for one second before he goes and just _barely_ holds Liam’s back to hug him back.

 

He can feel his quiet tears against his neck that he’s been holding onto and all his heartache soaking into him with those tears. Neither of them have any laughter left. There’s this thing people do when they laugh through pain. Like a distraction from everything breaking apart in your world. Nothing about this day has actually been funny yet they’ve been laughing about it the entire time. And now all they have left is tears. It’s squeezing painfully in their chests as he closes his eyes and holds him as close as he can now.

 

_“I don’t want you to leave forever.”_

 

Lux doesn’t say anything for a long time.

 

_“I… don’t either.”_

 

Liam’s eyes open against him as his arms melt around Liam with his fingers spread out down his back.

 

“Lima… he’s doing this for _you_ ,”

 

Liam’s shakes once as a tightness finally grips his throat, holding onto him tighter.

 

_“Why didn’t you ever tell me you weren’t happy?”_

 

“Of course I’m happy. You’re here.”

 

“Zayn, _please,”_ Liam pulls back to look at Zayn’s eyes, all brown and all _empty_. He can’t deflect this. They need to have conversations without sucking each other’s faces off.

 

 _“Please_ talk _to me.”_

 

His eyes are always so drained when he looks Liam in the eye. Even when he’s smiling, there’s still an inane glint in it. Or maybe Liam is just seeing that because he knows way more about his personal life than he’s ever known before and he’s just seeing everything differently even though it’s the same as it always is.

 

Of course, Liam’s not expecting him to be laughing and smiling at all. Everything in the world is trying to keep him in hell. How could he be happy right now?

 

 _They_ just need to talk because it feels like they really haven’t in years _._

 

Liam’s heard about Zayn’s life and his demons and even his _demon’s_ demons and his past and his whole reason for living from everyone and their fucking brother but… they haven’t had a real conversation about Lux or everything that’s been happening with Zayn, _personally_.

 

He just wants to understand what’s going on in his head for once. From him.

 

His thumb wipes over Liam’s cheeks, brushing off the crushed up flower petals sticking to his damp skin as he holds Zayn’s hand against him.

 

“He was supposed to start showing you how to control your powers… not go _on the roof.”_

 

Liam looks at him again.

 

“You… knew he was gonna break the mirror?”

 

Zayn’s eyes bulge.

 

“HE BROKE THE--” He stops before he completely lashes out, pinching the bridge of his nose as he sighs heavily in annoyance, shaking his head.

 

“I was already gonna let him out after you _woke up_ . We _talked about it. He wasn’t supposed to BREAK IT.”_ He rolls his eyes, looking up at he marsh.

 

“Jokes on you. I have a _stash_.”

 

“You… talked about it?” Liam repeats in total confusion. “ _When?”_

 

Zayn almost laughs as he looks at Liam again.

 

“When we left the room… Liam we’re _constantly_ talking.”

 

“You don’t even _look_ at him!”

 

“Why would I want to look at him _?”_ he grimaces

 

“I _can’t_ ignore him. That's impossible _._ You just can’t hear when I’m talking to him.” Zayn sighs.

 

“He's right, you can't stay here in our _room_ forever. I'm fucking _aware_ of that. But I don’t want you around anyone else you don’t _know_ if we’re not there. I didn’t know you were gonna be stuck inside the bloody _mirror_ when we came back and he wasn’t supposed to break it or bring you up _here_ but… I guess you can’t really learn as much without hellfire.”

 

“Why?” Liam shakes his head slowly.

 

“Because I know you can’t _do_ stuff with me that you can with him. You can’t learn how to control all your powers with me and you can’t… _talk_ to me about sex or your personal problems cause I know it makes you uncomfortable with me--”

 

 _“Oh my god,”_ Liam buries his face in Zayn’s shoulder in humiliation.

 

_“Don’t tell me… ”_

 

Zayn still holds his back, squeezing Liam’s love handles ticklishly he’s been gaining back from all the food he’s been eating again lately. His mother told him he was bordering on boney up on the surface from the weight he was dropping. He’s honestly glad to have it slowly coming back.

 

“You wouldn’t have upset me Liam.”

 

“Why do you _pretend?”_ Liam pushes Zayn off as he sits up again so they’re face to face.

 

“Why do you act like you don’t _know_ what’s going on?” He’s trying not to raise his voice and get angry about it but, he’s finding this ridiculous that’d he keep even _that_ from him.

 

“I don’t understand why do you keep _everything_ from me--”

 

“Okay you fucking _hypocrite_.” Zayn snarks at him.

 

“I _“pretended”,”_ He does air quotes, “Because every time I close my goddamn _eyes_ , all I hear is you with my fucking demon and telling him shit you _never_ tell me and sure it sort of hurts that you can’t come to _me_ about it but I could understand cause that’s something personal and I know how it feels to hold in what you’re really feeling for fear of _upsetting_ someone so I just thought, _well_ , maybe if I give him some space and let him do whatever he needs to figure himself out _,_ he’ll come to me when he’s ready to talk about it… even if you if you have to do it with _him_.”

 

Of course Lux knew Zayn was awake the entire time and Liam realises why he was coaxing him to say it all out loud.

 

Zayn and Lux’s complex relationship was something he thought he would never truly get either. When he thinks they’re gonna kill each other, they’re off making weird deals with each other that they don’t tell Liam about. Then they’re back at screaming at each other.

 

But Liam thinks he’s starting to understand clearly. Cause it really is a 3-way relationship and he can feel Zayn and he can feel Lux and the link holding them together isn’t so smudged and confusing at all anymore. There’s a lot of love-hate going on, _Liam_ being the only love point. But Liam doesn’t _have_ to be the only point.

 

“Why do you hate him?”

 

Liam talks softly now before this turns into a huge fight. Zayn tones it down too.

 

“Okay let’s do something.” He says suddenly, sitting up and crossing his legs like a pretzel. Liam does so too in front of him, yanking Zayn’s knees closer until they bang into his own.

 

“20 questions?” He smiles.

 

Zayn shakes his head.

 

“That’s overplayed. You wanna know fucked up stuff. Tell me something fucked up and I’ll tell you something fucked up. Then something nice. Don’t comment on whatever is said.”

 

Liam folds his lips a little, squinting closely at Zayn until he nods.

 

“Okay.”

 

Zayn nods too but before he says anything, Liam stops him.

 

“Can we start with something nice?” He says quickly.

 

Zayn smiles and sticks out his hand for Liam to shake, which Liam does, flopping his hand goofily.

 

“Hi, I’m Zayn Javadd Malik.” He introduces himself. “And I love you to the moon and never back to this shitty world again.”

 

“I’m Liam James,” he grins as they both start laughing before he can even finish his name when they’ve continued to shake hands.

 

“And I wish we could go on that moon and be in love forever.”

 

“We’ll make an itinerary for our space expedition in the next life. Get married there. Adopt intergalactic space babies after we legalise intercosmic marriage.” Zayn nods once as Liam grins, laughing.

 

“Deal.” He continues to shake Zayn’s hand like a noodle.

 

“Why are you covered in pollen?” Zayn blows on Liam’s nose so the dust brushes off. Liam laughs, wiping his face. It’s all over his skin.

 

“You are too.”

 

Zayn frowns a little as he looks up at Lux again.

 

“Okay something fucked up.” He says as he looks down at Liam. “Anything _at all_ you want to tell me… just say it now. I won’t say anything about it.”

 

Liam’s brows pinch for a second at the way Zayn says that.

 

“... you can go _first_.” He says slowly.

 

Zayn doesn’t even have to think about it. There’s no end to his.

 

“I’ve got 4 beautiful darlings I think about everyday that I might not ever see again. Jade would be the last one.”

 

Zayn’s darlings were always his sisters.

 

 _Ouch_.

 

Liam sucks in a short breath as he nods, unsure of what he’s gonna say to Zayn’s family when he comes back without him, and lie about not knowing where he is.

 

They’re probably gonna have some kind of memorial or vigil after a while like they’ve done for everyone that’s disappeared because everyone's gonna think he’s run away forever or most likely dead and Liam will have to go to it if only to hold Safaa and Wali’s little hands.

 

How _fucked up_ would it be to go to something like that knowing Zayn is _deathless_ and kicking it in hell somewhere for who even knows how long?

 

Fucked up indeed. But… they’re baring all right now so it’s all gonna be released. It’s Liam turn now.

 

“When I’m in our room alone, I think about my heart giving out when I leave so we can maybe be born in the same place again if you never come back.”

 

Zayn’s hand falters in Liam’s a little as his face sinks. He hesitates to continue but… he doesn’t say anything to Liam’s dark confession. The olympics were just getting started.

 

Nice stuff now.

 

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to put myself closer to you.” His hand stops shaking Liam’s, waffling their fingers together.

 

“I don’t feel cursed when I look at you… I feel blessed to have you, _wallahi,_ I _know_ ew, gross.”

 

Liam goes to cover his face with his hands but Zayn smiles, keeping them down so he can’t hide.

 

“Don't fucking _cringe_ at me!”

 

“Thundercat lyrics?” Liam asks as he smiles. Harry has ruined them with the psychedelic hippie music. Thinking about that first part again, Zayn always had a thing for communicating his feelings through song lyrics and poetry.

 

Liam often thinks about how the night of the party would’ve ended after they listened to Inferno together and Zayn confessed his feelings then like he was planning to if the world would’ve allowed for the night to be sane.

 

_‘Don’t ever leave me alone, without you where would I be?’_

 

It’s a song of longing for someone far away from you.

 

“Zayn I’m _right here_ with you _.”_

 

“I know…” Zayn nods down.

 

“I’ve _always_ been here.”

 

“But when we’re not,” He looks Liam in the eye now. “Just… _please_ never doubt that I’m coming back home to you. This isn’t my home here. I _am_ coming back up there.”

 

They’re both so teary eyed. It feels like they’re constantly saying goodbye.

 

Liam knows he’ll always mean that. But he doesn’t comment. Because they don’t have to say it outloud to keep their promise.

 

“I think about your voice a lot.” Liam waffles their hands again, resting them on their bumping knees.

 

“I feel kind of calm when I hear your voice.”

 

“Same here.”

 

His favourite colour swirls between them in the light shining through their clouds as it has been since he sat here.

 

“We look like we’re in a _dream_ together.” He laughs lightly as he blinks down into the light escaping between them.

 

“I don’t really sleep that much here.” Zayn admits.

 

“My body refuses to let me sleep when you’re not there. You feel like a lullaby.”

 

Liam smiles. These are getting less fucked up.

 

“I’ve always wanted you to take my virginity - _and I still do…_ but I think we’re too afraid to let each other in all the way.”

 

Zayn pauses for a moment before he nods in agreement.

 

“I know I keep you out of _a lot_ . And I know there’s fucked up things I should tell you about why the… portal can’t stay open with my demons but… the more you know, the more you’re involved. And if you seen what I have, you’d _die_ and I can’t let you in everything because it will hurt you too much and I don’t want you to leave here emotionally scarred. And I _don’t_ want you to meet more of my demons. The more you’re involved with me, the more it feels like something _awful_ will happen to you. And you’ll be lost in it all cause this tale just keeps ending in loneliness and death because of something I did. I won’t be able to stop it all from happening if you leave me now because we’ll end up never seeing each other ever again-- _”_

 

 _“Hey, hey where’s all this coming from?”_ Liam stops him from diving into the deep end as a million start running like a broken pipe having an outbreak. Zayn laughs.

 

“I’m sorry that was supposed to be nice wasn’t it?”

 

“Zayn is that…. is that what you dream about?” Liam asks him. Zayn shakes his head.

 

“It’s just a fucked up dream Liam, it’s not real.”

 

Zayn dreams about Liam being buried alive. The possibility of that happening is just has high as any other thing. Because it’s already happened. Half of it has anyways.

 

Liam’s under the earth right now so his dreams are prophesying true events. If he lives his body here, he can very much be lost in space forever and that would pretty much be the end of it all if he left his body in hell and went into another fucking dimension.

 

“You can tell me anything Z. Even if you don’t think it’s real. Even if you can’t trust your thoughts and… yours. You can tell me.”

 

Liam doesn’t want to force him to explain to him what he sees when he closes his eyes and visits his nightmares because he obviously doesn’t want to talk about it. It sound very traumatic. He can tell Liam when he’s ready to talk about what he sees in his nightmares.

 

“I’m supposed to tell you something nice now.”

 

“Okay.” Liam snorts a little. “Something nice.”

 

Zayn thinks for one second.

 

“I really _love_ your eyes.”

 

Liam doesn’t know why that one surprises him as his brows shoot up. Zayn’s always the one with the pretty eyes. Liam thought his eyes were kind of like elbows. Not really impressive or anything to really ever think about, light too harsh for him to see anything ever, the world too smudged without thick lenses.

 

He’d consider his eyes as probably the _least_ attractive thing about him.

 

 _“Dreamy eyes.”_ Zayn squeezes his hands a bit. Liam bats his eyelashes with a smile.

 

 _“Lovely dreamy eyes,”_ Zayn starts to lean closer.

 

“I love it when you smile halfway through all our kisses.”

 

“I love kissing you. I really wanna kiss all over your face right now.”

 

“I really want you to kiss m _e-”_

 

Zayn lets go of his hands as he bends forward all at once now while Liam bends back at the same time, falling into the clouds with mirth and kisses.

 

 _“I don’t… think we’re… doing this correctly.”_ Liam murmurs in between their lips. Zayn shakes his head, twisting his hands around Liam’s wrists.

 

 _“We most definitely are.”_ His head tilts sideways as his tongue finds it’s perfect rhythm with Liam’s.

 

Liam tilts his head as Zayn’s nose nudges his cheek up, rolling on his back again so Zayn's on top while his neck is all his, holding Liam’s wrists down, loosely, on either side of his head to blow off the flowers surrounding them even though more just collect as they continue to fall from the sky.

 

Liam looks at Zayn’s arm while Zayn nips at his neck, all the tattoos covering his skin, squinting a little as his eyes adjust to look at the details underneath the ink. It’s hard to tell if it’s all smooth skin with the tattoos.

 

Even if it wasn’t, Zayn’s skin would still be flawless anyways no matter what he does to it. He was hit by a car and his neck was snapped in half. Obviously any scars he’s ever had won’t be there anymore now.

 

He breaks his hand out to smooth over it, biting back his lips as Zayn peppers love bites on his neck, swirling his tongue around the dark heart marked on the centre of Liam’s throat.

 

Zayn eyes flicker up Liam’s face, finding his wide open and far far away.

 

 _“What are you thinking about?”_ He murmurs.

 

“You never answered,” Liam prods gently with his fingers crawling under Zayn’s shirt, up his back. Zayn waits for Liam to go on with patient eyes.

 

“Why do you hate him?”

 

You’d think the answer would be obvious but… Liam’s not just talking about Lux.

 

Zayn doesn't seem to have to put any thought into it, nothing even angry or annoyed at all in his voice as he rolls off Liam with a tired sigh.

 

“Well, I’ve been thinking a bit differently for the last month or so.” He starts conversationally.

 

“Ever since I got stabbed to death and woke up in my bedroom a few hours later, perfectly fine, I’ve been thinking I came from this parallel universe.” He watches Lux as he talks, floating on his back above them in a world in between theirs.

 

His hair is getting longer everyday. It’s floating just past the nape of his neck now as he floats on his back.

 

“And I think in this universe I came from, dying means _living_ and reflections move you around the way they want _you_ to move… pretty much the complete opposite of what everything is supposed to mean in this universe.”

 

“So you’ve also been an alien this entire time too?” Liam turns over, folding his other hand over Zayn’s thumping chest. Zayn nods.

 

“Apparently we’re all from outer space,”

 

He brushes back Liam’s hair, running his fingers through his curls.

 

“And I think in this parallel universe I came from, saying you hate something actually means you just have this… _indescribable_ affection for it that influences your mind and body to a degree you can’t even measure. I don’t think this kind of affection has a name here in this universe. Not a good or bad one, or even a _neutral_ one just…  feelings that don’t have places to go.”

 

He looks over at Liam then, whose own heart jumps at the notion that Zayn maybe _doesn’t_ hate Lux and want to die. Cause out of everything he’s learned about Zayn’s life today, the one thing that Liam remains certain of is that deep down, even if his heart is still dark and his mental health has been unstable… death just isn’t in Zayn’s nature.

 

Not because he's immortal but in a way that he doesn't want _anyone_ to die. Not a person. Or an animal. Or a flower. Or himself. And not even his demon. Cause Lux belongs to him.

 

Liam doesn’t think that’s amazing just because there’s another part him that exists, even though the idea of two Zayn’s only leads him to very _dirty_ fantasies. He thinks it’s amazing because Lux is a piece of his consciousness that’s been there to remind Zayn who he really is and even though he’s an asshole sometimes, Liam still loves him. He loves every part of Zayn, flaws and all.

 

Even if he’s making his life hell, Zayn knows Lux was just as blind-sided by this curse as he was. They were cursed _together_ and pulled apart at birth. So there has to be _some_ level of awareness that they’re in the same sinking ship here.

 

“He has negative effects, and positive… like a drug.” Zayn elaborates on he and Lux being together.

 

“I’m at this fucked place of being dead and alive with him because he’s somewhere he’s not supposed to be and so am I and I dunno if that means we’re dead or alive… like that weird German cat in the box you told me about. Like, yeah, I’m sick of him being all up in my fucking _face_ and I’m ruined for _life_ by all the blood that’s always gonna soil our hands but… I would’ve died like 80 times last month before you even got here without him. And he’s the only one I’ve ever met that cares about the most important aspect of my life that means anything at all to me just as much as I do. I thought that was a… bad thing at first and maybe I did get a little too paranoid with keeping him in the mirror but, I could never hate someone that loves you Liam. He’s _helping_ us. It’s just...” Zayn sighs in frustration as he loses the words.

 

“It’s just _complicated._ I don’t KNOW how I feel. I get that I’m like this fucked up old man and everyone thinks they fucking know me and I have all the fucking answers but I don’t _know_ what is wrong with me or what happened either but I _here_ now and I can’t just run away and leave all this shit like how it is. It affects _your life too_ and I have to keep you in my sight because things are going out of my control and I need Lux’s help if any of it is ever going to be fixed. Even if I get sick of him following me everywhere I fucking go, when he wasn’t there, I felt completely shallow. I still don’t really know who _I am_ without him. I didn't see anything but these messed up, fake versions of myself and now I just see _him._ I don’t want to live forever _stuck_ with him. But I don't want to be _empty._ ” He admits.

 

“There’s no life with us. But there’s no death either. We’re just _stuck._ Every morning when I wake up, I self immolate. The inside of my body gets set on _fire_ and it moves underneath my skin when I move and dies when I close my eyes. It’s not actually fire even though it burns me. It’s just him there and it fucking hurts but without it… I don’t feel anything under my skin at all. I don’t know which is worse.”

 

“Right now, you are a quantum object in superposition.” Liam says. Zayn’s brows quirk slightly, so Liam elaborates cause he knows Zayn has never understood Schroedinger’s cat in full.

 

“Damn, so I’m Superman? I always wanted to be Hulk. He probably had a monster dick.”

 

Liam laughs as he shakes his head.

 

He was never the scientific type. Linguistics, literature and philosophy… the whole other lot, sure. But throw in something like physics and you lose him there. Nars’ knowledge of how physics worked seemed seriously flawed. But then again, Liam is sitting on top of a fucking cloud right now so what the hell does he know?

 

“You exist in every possible state of being with each other to the point where you don’t even know what it is. Cause he’s so indisputable but also… intermediate. Like, in between things you can’t even see, which creates a conflict and a paradox. But, I think I can see it. You don’t know what it is that’s been missing exactly but… you knew something just wasn't _there_ . And you don’t know how you feel about it being there now cause so much has happened to us… at this point, everything is just blurring together and now we’re coasting through the motions. And everything just is what it is. _Whatever_ that is.”

 

Zayn smiles softly, snorting as he looks at Liam’s lips, tracing over the dust all over them with gentle fingertips.

 

“You know, sometimes I forget that you can feel everything I’m feeling _better_ than me.”

 

Maybe when he’s not numb, sure. But Liam feels Zayn right now cause he felt the exact same way about Lux earlier this morning.

 

This indescribable feeling of “ _uncertainty_ _of”_ what exists there that’s hard to distinguish what it is exactly _._ Cause there are seemingly no words that exist in this reality for it.

 

Now that he understands Lux way better, he knows that Zayn and Lux aren’t different at all. Not just their personality but who they actually are as individuals that are on two sides of the same being. Because Liam can see who Lux actually is. Neither of them asked to be who or where they are now but… something brought them back together now that they can’t control. And Liam thinks they both need to just accept that instead of rejecting each other.

 

Like chinese finger traps. The harder you pull your fingers away from each other, the more you’re stuck forever. But only when you push them together do they become free.

 

They just might find that this indisputable bind to one another isn’t really self-hate but… an affinity to their identity.

 

 _Narcissism_.

 

That doesn’t have to be vanity and emptiness. Narcissism is a form of self-love. Looking at your reflection and seeing someone your happy with and if you’re not, you build towards it by taking care of yourself, staying motivated to keep living and accepting your flaws as being part of who you are too. That’s what Narcissus should’ve seen when he was reflecting on himself.

 

Self-love doesn’t have to be negative. It takes time. Liam’s still trying to learn how to know and love the way he is when he sees himself too.

 

So maybe that affinity is trying to fall in love with who they are rather than hate it or torturing each other or inflict pain on themselves or ignoring who they truly are. Cause Liam’s already been doing that.

 

The falling in love part.

 

That doesn’t always have to be romantic and having sex with each other. Love can be willing to sacrifice yourself in place of someone else, or being in love with your friends and family. In love with the planet you live on. In love with your favourite book or movie. In love with your life, and just loving and respecting _yourself_.

 

Love has no boundaries because it's _freedom_.

 

And when you fall in love with yourself, you get to share that with someone. And Liam wants to share that with Zayn. Cause he's always been in love with him and he wants Zayn to know how amazing that feels too. He can’t break Zayn’s curse. Zayn has to break it himself. But Liam can still help. And all their friends that are willing to help and anything else Zayn needs to help him get through this too.

 

If they just saw how wonderful they truly are within themselves, maybe get a little introspection for his reflection and some metanoia to change his heart, they’d see it and finally make peace with each other. Having a change of heart, mind and spirit is a journey that doesn’t happen overnight.

 

When you love someone, you make them conscious of things they can’t see or realise for themselves. They do that with Liam constantly. Maybe it’s time Liam started doing it too. They both have darkness in them right now and there’s a lot of chaos happening in this dark world they're in. But light can do away with darkness. And love diminishes hate.

 

Also Satan needs to take his ass on as well. That just seems right.

 

The devil has been putting in a lot of work in their lives, sending agents and witches and all kinds of fucking sabotage against them they haven’t been dodging very well but, hey, that’s life right? Sort of.

 

“I guess I’ve just been mostly trying to figure out why the fuck did the universe chose to send _me_ here….” Zayn pauses for a moment as they look at each other.

 

Liam massages down his back tenderly, looking down Zayn’s face, so close, their eyelashes kiss.

 

“Maybe your universe sent you here cause my universe was sending me here,” He traces up an invisible trail up Zayn’s back, making him shiver against his body.

 

“...and maybe we just planned to meet up and collide somewhere in the middle…”

 

Zayn nods with his eyes closed, getting submersed in Liam’s voice. Bathing in it so it’s all over his skin.

 

“.... but you know, your journey got a bit fucked up by the Demiurge or whatever so maybe I came to your planet before we got to ours so I could help you out. Cause I’m a good soulmate like that.”

 

They both snort as their heads press into each other. Zayn squints one eye open at him.

 

“You know, you’re slowly becoming one of those really dark and romantic sage types _…_ where did you suddenly get the answers to everything?”

 

“Maybe we already have the answers.”

 

“You think so?”

 

Liam nods.

 

“Also, you’ve been down my throat like every other hour of the day, which is probably like 100 times the minute on the surface so… I reckon after getting 100 billion hours of blowjobs in, you’re probably starting to rub off on me way more than you ever have before.”

 

“I think your dodgy math is a bit flawed but I reckon you’re probably right.”

 

They lay there for a long while, holding each other in their laughter and keeping the silences light in the sounds uttered by anybody, gloaming in the pink clouds as it continues to rain toon them to.

 

The thing about silence is, it’s not always the absence of sound. They’re still talking but the silence is there in them, still. After spending forever with someone, silence becomes this inner stillness that let’s you feel _the_ moment in this ultimate reality.

 

Feeling every part of where you really are to the fullest and who you're with. _Submersed_ in the moment. So when you’re with the one you love the most, that silence says more to each other than any sound in their universe will ever.

 

“So I’ve done some math of my own and worked out a few things in my head.” Zayn restarts with his pinky wrapped around Liam’s resting on his chest.

 

“I’ve been trying to weigh out the odds and calculate how much is set against us in the outcome of this as we do _for_ us. I’ve got like… half a dozen or so demons partially for and against me and… one dewy eyed angel sat next to me.”

 

Liam nods along.

 

“Math sounds a bit dodgy but okay. Go on.”

 

“We’re not very good at math huh?” Zayn snorts as he continues.

 

“I think I have a few galaxies against me as well which is like one point down… but then you’ve probably got a bunch of star friends in that Canis Major constellation in different galaxies so that one cancels out. Then there’s death _on_ my side which is at least one point up. Or… maybe 4. I’ve died at least 4 or 5 times collectively since last week. So, yeah 4 points in my favour. And… I’m gonna throw in the multiverse as Switzerland so that’s like minus one.”

 

“Okay, I’m not following your thought process _at all.”_

 

Zayn covers Liam’s mouth so he can’t interrupt.

 

“And my ultimate conclusion has been, fuck the universe.”

 

Sounds like a standard Zayn conclusion.

 

“And… fuck whoever did this. Whatever reason it chose _me_ for, whether it's to kill me a thousand times, or _spite_ me… or just fuck with me cause it’s got some real sick jokes, _whatever_ the odds of the outcome are, I honestly don’t think I’d ever regret any of it. It keeps bringing me to the most amazing thing of cosmic beauty I think I will ever see.”

 

 _“Here?”_ Liam mumbles through his hand. Zayn nods, lifting his hand off Liam’s mouth.

 

_“Yeah. Here with you.”_

 

All this space talk is making them drowsy.

 

His fingers braid together with Liam’s, coming up to his lips between them and kissing each one softly, like he’s in love with every single fingertip too. His exposed arms reminds Liam again of his _original_ , original question again he kept in his mind so he wouldn’t forget.

 

“You don’t have to talk about it right now if you… don’t want to,” He starts as Zayn looks up at him.

 

“But _please…_ promise me you’ll come and talk to someone if you feel like you might want to… _hurt_ yourself.”

 

Zayn looks down at their hands, not denying or confirming if he’s thought about hurting himself.

 

He wraps his fingers around Liam’s hand again, rubbing down his arm.

 

 _“Okay.”_ He sighs.

 

“Really?”

 

 _“I promise.”_ He assures, sincere in his words. _“I’ll come to you.”_

 

“You better come back to me Z.” Liam says, joking in his sternness. “I _will_ come back here and hunt you down.”

 

“No you won’t.” Zayn shakes his head seriously. “I’m not joking. If you try to come back here we’re fucking fighting.”

 

He squares up with his fists directed at Liam, pretending to punch him out in slow motion as Liam laughs.

 

“I’d wouldn’t let you win this time.” Liam says through his squished cheek that Zayn gradually squashes more and more.

 

“ _Let_ me?” His brows shoot up challengingly.

 

“ _Yeah?”_ His head tilts as he sits up.

 

“Get up.”

 

“I’m not gonna fight you.” Liam laughs as he closes his eyes.

 

“Those are what I believe intellectuals call _‘fighting words’_... so get your ass up now.” He forces Liam to his feet, yanking him up but Liam shakes his head at Zayn with darkening eyes. But he keeps it under his control inside him. This is the literal only possible way he will ever beat Zayn.

 

“Is that a _demon_ glaring at me?” Zayn’s head tilts as he smiles, backing up as he beckons Liam with both hands.

 

“Come on then, I wanna see you put your _back_ into it.”

 

“You’re not as superior as you _think_ you are babe.” He says with a low smile before leaping into him, giving him a taste of his own medicine, pinning Zayn down and sitting on him as he attacks his abdomen.

 

 _“Oh my god STOP!”_ Zayn wheezes, grabbing at Liam’s hands to stop the tickling.

 

_“This isn't… F-faiR, STOP!”_

 

 _“Make me.”_ Liam grins as Zayn tries to knee him off to crawl away laughing. Liam is reminded of something cool he wanted to show Zayn of how bright it looks when he runs as fast as he can.

 

He let’s him escape for only a moment as he gets on his feet shoots off across the fluffy roof, laughing with his head nodded back before he almost screams in shock when Liam’s blinding trail takes him off guard in front of him, catching him in his arms before the light dies down.

 

Zayn’s eyes go wide as his face drains of blood completely, making Liam laugh at his shocked expression. So shocked that grey swirls into his eyes.

 

“Tag. You’re it.” Liam grins before speeding away again.

 

He blinks a few times utterly _stupefied_ before quickly getting his bearings and horror running through him.

 

 _“Lima WAIT!”_ He takes off after him but he’s way too fast, a real-life _nightmare_ taking form right before his eyes.

 

_‘Why does he look like that?’_

 

Lux shakes his head gravely.

 

_“LUX!”_

 

“I DON’T KNOW!” Lux yells at him

 

“It’s his just his natural BODY. I told you that was fucking _Liam._ The fire out here obviously exposes the light when he runs faster. No one will see it on the surface. He won’t be in danger of anyone ever seeing it if he goes with Harry-- _”_

 

_‘His fucking DAD is going to take him away! He can’t go back with everything that’s happening right now.’_

 

“Well he’s not a fucking flashlight! I’m not magic, I can’t make the light disappear!” Lux barks at him angrily

 

“I wasn’t the one that fucking BIT him and brought him here in the FIRST place--”

 

“Please don’t even _try,”_ Zayn rolls his eyes. “You borderline _raped_ him. Let’s not start playing the fucking blame game right now because I will _humble you.”_

 

“I didn’t _fucking_ **_RAPE HIM!”_ **

 

Talking to himself like this always makes him feel crazy.

 

“Look, I don’t know what this fucking means… light is so _elusive_. Different lighting can give you different illusions. He doesn’t have a celestial body, he’s still human. Humans can’t exist on a tempus… maybe you just… saw the light before when he was playing footie and your subconscious registered it or something--”

 

“What the fuck is a tempus?”

 

“A plane that exists past the _light_ barrier--”

 

“Well how does he get AWAY from it!?!”

 

“I’ve never seen heard of a HUMAN made of FUCKING LIGHT ENERGY! I. DON’T. KNOW. Nothing with _mass_ can pass the speed of light. He can’t be on a tempus with his mass.”

 

“Well he obviously doesn't HAVE MASS without his fucking body!”

 

A tempus is a plane of _time._ Since light surpasses time, light can stretch out far behind on a tempus which is why you can still see stars in the sky even if they’re not really there anymore. Meaning, if Liam goes fast enough to actually surpass the speed of light without his body, he will be on a tempus. If he goes on a tempus… he can travel _anywhere on it._ And now they realise it’s possible that Narcissus might have _really seen_ glimpses of Liam in his lifetime. Cause not even light can’t travel into a realm of the future because the future doesn’t exist yet.

 

But… the past does. It stretches out behind all of us and follows us wherever. A tempus is a _dangerous_ plane to be on. If you go back, you can’t come to the future because it might not exist anymore if you alter time… and your entire world could explode into non-existence and rip all kinds of irreversible holes in your reality. Holes that won’t close up like the portals in Zayn’s room. They’ll keep ripping the more you alter the past. And keep ripping. And keep _ripping_ until it’s all gone and your reality is poofed.

 

The weird thing is, there are only a few things in any universe that can exist in both the past and the present. One of those things are the light and energy of stars. The question is how the hell can Liam can do that because he’s _human…_  because according to Zayn’s dreams, he _can._ Starlight doesn’t usually come down to _Earth_ and manifest into a human body so whatever Liam has yet to unearth about what he’s got under his skin… no one else in the world will be able to teach him anything about it. He’s on his own when it comes to projecting his light.

 

 

If Liam projects completely and surpasses time, _which he clearly can if he goes fast enough without his body,_ he could leave this world and a _ctually_ be stuck in the past. Forever. And Zayn’s blurry dreams about Liam are suddenly all nightmares. Cause it’s apparently already happened.

 

“He projects in his _sleep_ he can project in dreams too--”

 

“You don’t KNOW that!”

 

“Oh my god,”

 

“God, what now--”

 

“LIAM STOP!” Lux shouts ahead of him. He’s gonna fall through the hole in the house.

 

Lux bursts into flames as he hits the speed of sound…. And then light so he can actually catch up and stop Liam from falling through the roof. Going this fast above the clouds is safe.

 

“Fucking prick why do you keep running _ahead of me--”_

 

_‘Lux… what did you do?’_

 

_“I may have accidentally burned down the park. ABRAXAS might be at the house. If he sees Liam--”_

 

_‘WHY DID YOU TAKE HIM TO THE PARK! I TOLD YOU--’_

 

"You told me to HELP him. I took him there so my friend can fix our fucked up sight--"

 

Before they can continue arguing, they slam into Liam from behind from where he’s suddenly stopped, teetering over an edge from where he’s found the hole in the roof, making them all crash through it, screaming as they plummet to the rock ground after crashing through the ceiling.

  
  
And now, after a few tranquil moments of peace, insanity ensues.

 


	13. Epsilon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry fits together new sinister pieces of the puzzle and finds more questions than answers along the way, as per usual.

~*~

 

As they say, all good things come in pairs. Like Jedward.

 

Okay, not Jedward.

 

Pairs like Liam and Zayn, coming together like macaroni and cheese.

 

But things don’t _always_ work out in pairs. Even for soulmates.

 

Some things don't even come in pairs at all. There's singles, like Beyonce, Zayn before Liam. Or trios - Destiny’s Child pre-Beyonce when you throw Harry in there with the lovers. (Yes, Harry considers himself the Beyonce of the three of them.) Some things even come in quartets, like say you added in Niall too. Or even quintuplets if we toss in Louis as well… like some perfect boy band out there from the past.

 

The point is, these things that come together in life just _fit_ together, even if they start off as a single, like a lone star that fits together with others to make a constellation _._

 

The tuples these pairs come in are as infinite as the stars in all the known ways of the open sky. In milky ways and beyond, coming together in clusters at every speck in the universe. Except for where there is nothing, as so in voids and black holes where stars _die_. Alone.

 

But Liam’s never had to worry about being alone. Not in this life, or in any past one either.

 

One particular cluster of stars in the sky came in a vivacious and beautiful set of 8 that anyone without a roof can gaze at in the night sky: A constellation called Canis Major.

 

“Sirius - Alpha, Murzin - Beta, Muliphein - Gamma, Wezen - Delta , Adhara - Epsilon, Purud - Zeta, Aludran - Eta, and τ - Tau. This order goes A - B - C - D - E - F - G… and S?”

 

 _“Oh my God Harry,”_ Anthony groans as he drives down Roosevelt park road in the woods for the 5th time today as they’ve been going in circles.

 

“Shut _up_ with the stupid Greek alphabet already. You’ve said the same thing 10 times _\--”_

 

“Tony, just keep focusing on driving please? You’re doing great babe. I’m proud of you.” Ben shushes him from the backseat where he and Harry huddled together while Mikey is knocked out in the front, feet kicked up and mouth wide open with his beanie covering over his eyes as he fills the car with mildly loud snoring, bordering on obnoxiously loud.

 

Anthony actually smiles at Ben’s encouragement on his driving. Harry shakes his head with a grin at how easy Ben can get him to smile or calm down unlike anyone else. There’s not a lot to be proud if though.

 

They’re going in circles on a dirt road because he’s popped about 5 pills within the last 2 hours and he needs to be occupied with something so Ben let him drive in this safe zone where no pregnant ladies, teenaged boys or demons are at risk of being hit by a group of high teenagers.

 

Anthony is driving nonstop because their brand new Chevy Cruze has built in wifi, completely untraceable with Ben’s superb coding and hacking skills as he’s emptying out the contents of Sophia’s laptop.

 

Increasingly _disturbing_ contents.

 

Here Harry thought she was just your average satanist but… her notes are giving Harry new revelations that she’s in way _deeper_ than your local devil worshipper. Like… she might _personally_ know who she’s working for and why. Or Sophia just happens to be really into astrology by coincidence.

 

But the picture of Liam’s dad with her grandfather when he was younger makes it obvious she didn’t stumble upon Liam by chance. Her family used to live in Manningtree generations ago. And apparently, so did Liam’s.

 

Their families knew each other of course. Manningtree has always been a very small town. The population of right now is the biggest they’ve ever got.

 

But all they have is the one picture and Liam knows nothing about his dad, let alone anything about his family or who he was friends with in his past.

 

Harry knew his dad was old but… he didn’t know he was _this_ old. Being friends with Sophia’s granddad in their youth would have to make him in his fucking 70s right now at the very _least_ . Harry has been considering where exactly Liam’s star heritage might come from, _if_ this is really in his blood line. His father could’ve passed this shit onto him.

 

But that doesn’t explain where the Millers fit in here. It be awfully unfatherly of him to let his son get mixed up with satanist witches. Unless… he was a witch too.

 

Would that make Liam a witch of some sort? Harry doesn’t rule out that possibility.

 

He doubts it though.

 

Sophia’s grandfather doesn’t seem to be actually  _on_ the witches side. He and Liam’s dad are dressed like that cast of Ghostbusters in the picture. And they’re holding ropes that are tied like a noose behind them. If anything… they seem like they were part of the people that were _lynching_ witches. But it’s just a picture and it not even a century old so, there’s not much to go on as far as wildly guessing goes.

 

Regardless of whoever the fuck Sophia really is to them, even with the help of Ben accessing her icloud, her notes are too out of context to make sense of.

 

“The most messed up thing here is after Alpha. It goes straight to _Epsilon_ instead of going in order of the alphabet. I mean… it’s called the “Alpha Bet” for that reason alone. _The order.”_ Ben murmurs.

 

“Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta. _Then_ Epsilon.” He goes in the correct order properly as he squints at the roster of Greek letters going with each star in the constellation next to the map.

 

“And then _last_ is _Gamma_.” Harry adds, shaking his head in confusion. “How the fuck does this jump from A to E then C at the very end? This alphabet is all out of order.” He tsks, getting frustrated.

 

He should be able to _connect_ this to something.

 

They’re trying to figure out how to read the map but… the series the stars are listed in the alphabet follows seemingly no pattern whatsoever.

 

The first map is the most simple:

  


 

The stars with their respective Greek symbols of the alphabet that indicate their position in the constellation - The first star being “ _α”_ for _Alpha Canis Major_. Also known as Sirius, currently the brightest star in the northern hemisphere, also known as the North Star.

 

This star is known as the one responsible for summer heat instead of our own star we’d call the _sun_ , funny enough.

 

Then “ _β”_ for _Beta Canis Major,_ the second star in the constellation, also known as Murzin.

 

Third, _“_ _γ”_ for _Gamma Canis Major,_ also called Muliphein. Fourth, _“δ”_ for _Delta Canis Major,_ called Wezen for short. And then they get to the fifth star… the fifth letter of the alphabet _“E”_.

 

“Epsilon Canis Majoris.” Ben calls it. Although Harry, knowing much more then Ben, would called this one something else.

 

“Adara’s a pretty name.” He smiles.

 

 _“Liam’s even prettier.”_ Harry mumbles.

 

“What?”

 

“Nothing.” Harry sits up quickly as he rubs his chin, thinking hard.

 

One the map, _Epsilon_ is 5th. But _Adara_ is listed as number _2,_ right under Sirius on the weird list next to it for some strange reason. A list that has illustrations of stars next to it:

  
  


 

“This is what I don’t understand. E is the _fifth_ letter in the alphabet. So why Adara listed _second?”_

 

The next map connects the stars. It’s shaped like a dog standing on it's hind legs so you see how they look as a constellation:

 

Even on that map, Adara is still at letter 5 despite this star being the second one listed in descending order after Sirius.

 

The next map goes on to do you one even better, labelling each star with their anglicised names:

 

All this seems perfectly innocent and explainable.

 

Canis Major houses some of the brightest stars in the sky to this very day so their connection seems logical to anyone who is into astrology if Harry didn’t know what he knows about “Adara” and what he knows about Sophia.

 

What the hell did she _really_ want with Zayn _and_ Liam since he may or may not be descendent from this constellation is the question Harry is trying to figure out privately, unbeknownst to Ben.

 

Sophia’s _definitely_ not into “coincidentally” into astrology and also just so happens to also be interested in the constellation of Liam’s alleged past life.

 

Adara is only 400 light years away from Earth. She would’ve had to have died around 400 years ago to have gotten to Earth around the time Liam would’ve been born in the 90s. How that connects to the necromancy crisis 400 years ago, Harry also can’t figure out.

 

He wishes he could ask Ben since he’s really into Catholicism and the Vatican in Italian history so he’s pretty familiar with all things having to do with the occult and black magic and all that devil shit but… he doesn’t know how he’d react if Harry shared too much with him. He’s better off not knowing the full truth, along with everyone else in the car.

 

For now, all they know is that Sophia is a satanist and a witch who is in league with the morning star and that she may or may not be involved in a large-scale conspiracy to kill every teenager in town for some, unknown, evil agenda. They believed that very easily after literally raiding through her laptop that talks about her coven in detail.

 

So anyways, back to Liam’s connection to Adara.

 

The math of her taking approximately 400 light years to get to Earth from her constellation just seems way too easy to think this is the star that came to Manningtree 400 years ago but… that would make Liam the morning star then and that star has been on Earth for way more than 400 years. Plus that “star” came from Hell. Not heaven.

 

Also… Liam’s not from hell in any life and he’s not the spawn of Satan.

 

But then again, as Harry thinks about it, the bible says that Satan was, in fact, a fallen angel.

 

That doesn’t mean the morning star is Adara.

 

There are _billions_ of stars. Adara can’t be the only one that exists here with them.

 

The stars probably all know each other. Especially if they’re in the habit of taking sabbaticals to Earth. But the morning star didn’t come to Earth on a jolly holiday.

 

The morning star was thrown out of heaven, A.K.A. the sky, and banished forever. Harry could see that making someone angry and possibly vengeful, as Gods are rumoured to be if you take a look at literally any old Greek myth about them.

 

Harry’s actually seen Canis Major before but he’s never really thought much about what lives beyond the sky as he’s more of an astronomy as whole kind of guy in relation to humans, not stars.

 

As of right now, he and Ben are only on one burning question: What the hell are this a maps listing?

 

After staring for far too long, Harry begins to feel like an idiot.

 

The answer is staring them _right in the face_ in perfect English and it’s the second time today he feels like a fool to being an ignorant human about all these things he lives amongst and has absolutely no knowledge of.

 

He shoves the dumb laptop away from him, towards Ben in annoyance as he looks out the window, holding his hand over his mouth to think, shaking his head as his eyes wander with all the trees they drive past. All these many trees holding all their many dark secrets inside.

 

He can’t get frustrated about this. He’s _only_ human. They can’t forget that even when they’re confronting demons in hell. No matter what anyone’s past is, they’re all still human. No one is expecting him to have all the answers. But he’s a fucking indigo so he _knows_ he’s gotta be able to find the answers somewhere. So he sets his frustration aside and uses his brain.

 

Adara _wasn’t_ the brightest star in this constellation. Sirius is. The 3 wise men of Bethlehem even used the North Star to find Jesus on Christmas day.

 

_What’s the significance of Adara to them?_

 

“Oh my God…” Ben murmurs slowly beside him.

 

“What?” Harry quickly looks at the screen, all the blemishes over a new map Ben has found along with a more detailed list of all the stars.

 

“I think I’ve figured out why they’re out of order…”

 

“Oh… _wow._ ”

 

Goosebumps shoot down Harry's face and body as they stare at the map for a few long minutes.

 

This would be the part where the violinist on the soundtrack in the background of their lives would skid across the cords sporadically in one long distorted note.

 

 _This_ map has been marked down thoroughly:

  
  


 

“It’s listing every star in this constellation from brightest to _least_ brightest,” Ben explains as he reads the list but he doesn’t need to because Harry is reading it too.

 

It lists every detail of all their corona’s, which is Latin for “crown”, ancient greek for “garland”. So basically, the stars have floral crowns around them, like halos. Also known as the aura of plasma that surrounds the sun and stars. That glow you see around them that emits their light. The greater the plasma, the bigger and brighter that star is.

 

The stars corona is it’s  _outer_ shell that shows how bright. Their crowns indicate how powerful they are.

 

 _Inside_ , the star is full of plasma. Plasma inside a star surrounding the non physical material of their being is almost equivalent to the blood inside the human body that surrounds our bones, which Harry figures would be like… their _souls._ Only with stars, it radiates and glows pretty bright since we see that as light. With humans, we’d feel that as energy and auras according to quantum physics. So Harry’s pseudoscientific hippie beliefs are actually backed by _actual_ science.

 

The stars are on his side. And their light is like the equivalent to their soul.

 

Harry’s aura is _indigo_ according to Lux, which we can’t see as humans but we _can_ feel it. Our “vibes”, or the frequency we all vibrate on. You usually get on with who’s on your same level. Who you can vibe with.

 

Indigo falls on a level 6, which is pretty rare for humans to go beyond a level 5. Colours that fall on those sides of the spectrum are usually rare, like being born with O-negative blood.

 

Light can be visible on our plane and we can feel it too through heat, or see it through our eyes but it can be transparent if it’s on another plane where we can’t see or feel it at all but maybe still sense it someplace else beyond our 5 senses. The same senses that sense when a demon is lurking around in a human body.

 

But some humans - like Harry - can perceive these unseen things around them through a few _extra_ senses that receive higher frequencies than your average human being. Highly spiritual humans.

 

Or people like Harry, high as a kite most of the time, surrounded in an indigo haze that looks like smoke when it's really just his aura that's making him seem high when he's not.  

 

Harry notes this is why _most people_ can’t see Liam when he’s outside of his body, that light he frequently emits and projects in on a higher plane of existence, although Harry can see it.

 

Star-child meets star-child.

 

Of course, they became best friends so easily. They’re a perfect match for platonic soulmates. It’s not so unlikely that Harry might’ve known Liam in a distant past too.  

 

Now that he knows Liam lives and breathes on a subtle plane right over multiple physical and non physical worlds, watching Liam on an equinox will now be so much more interesting if Harry can remember to get high so he can see what Liam _really_ looks like when moonlight touches sunlight to meet Liam’s light, since Harry can see him when he’s really high. His light is _just_ subtle enough to bounce off physical particles in space like how dust does with sunlight.

 

According to this, Adara was the brightest source of “ultraviolet” light. Which is the light beyond a visible spectrum.

 

If that’s his past, then Liam really can be _invisible_ if he wants to - hence why no one ever sees him leave his body.

 

That could be… _useful_.

 

Harry's not so sure how invisible he'll look if he projects on an etheric plane down in the underworld though. He's surrounded by _firelight_ in hell. According to this, Adara’s starlight could be seen best in the day time. The more light she was surrounded by, especially from fire, the brighter she’d looked.

 

“Shit, this is… _incredible._ ” Harry murmurs as they read the details of how these stars can exist on different planes with different bodies.

 

Adara had a celestial body, of course - a type of soft body. Like all stars. But this doesn’t mention anything about a soft body for a human.

 

Adara is also described here to be the second biggest as she was rosette in shape and _“roseis astrum aeternum”_ , which means the shape of this star was designed in the arrangement similar to a rose and the light was “rosy-forever” in the sunlight.

 

Her aura was pink.

 

“Astrum” is also another word in Latin for a weapon called “astra,”, which is a powerful tool some feminine deities possess that they can release from their bare hands (summoning a sword, bow and arrow, gauntlet, etc.)  

 

 _“Fuck.”_ Harry whispers. If this is really his past, then Liam might have powers of _destruction_ within his projection.

 

Adara is specifically noted to have had “magnetic and repellent flux”, attracting or forcing away anything within her vicinity with a continuous flow or stream of light. Apparently, her light could pass through _anything_ and it never stopped flowing. Even in the daylight. And now the mystery of why Liam dissociates and zones out so much might have a real cause.

 

He’s always in his own zone. Even when he's asleep, he doesn't stop projecting. But Liam somehow manages to _stop_ his body from feeling anything… his emotion, his senses, his thoughts... which _shouldn’t_ be a possible if this flux thing still exists in him.

 

 

Or possible even for a human.

 

No one can stop thinking just like a star can never stop projecting light. But somehow… Liam achieves the impossible on both sides. Even if he was a star, he’d still be unique among the average one. He has more control over his bodily functions that what he should. He can leave his body and cut off his senses without dying somehow. Unless... whenhe leaves his body, he actually  _is_ dying. Which means if he stayed out for too long, Liam would die.

 

Liam’s entire existence as a star-boy was a phenomenon beyond his comprehension at first but… Harry thinks he’s beginning to understand a bit now.

 

Humans aren’t so different from stars afterall.

 

We both have auras and plasma. Emit energy. We breathe, extend life into another, exist in billions of universes, and the most beautiful thing Harry has learned about these beings: We fall in love with each other.

 

Harry hasn’t been able to get that far in life but, whatever. He still thinks love is a beautiful thing to fall into. Especially Liam and Zayn’s, which has travelled across worlds just to breathe the same air.

 

That part of this detailed list isn’t as disturbing as the map though.

 

Along with _this_ map is also where all these stars are probably located right now. Or maybe… _used_ to be.

 

Sirius is the first _and_ brightest star on the map so it’s placement in the constellation matches with the magnitude of how big it is and how far it’s light can reach. Adara may be the 5th star in location but it’s the second brightest and 2nd most powerful star in the constellation as a whole so, she gets listed second instead of 5th in terms of how powerful she was.

 

Harry isn’t sure how these are measured exactly but it seems to go off distance from Earth. Adara used to be the brightest you can see from Earth at _night_ but now Sirius is the biggest and brightest in the constellation.

 

Third brightest to this day is Wezen. And then Murzin. The last 4 are relatively the same scale - but different masses.

 

This map has the weakest four _slashed_ through in red ink with different levels of hell listed underneath them.

 _T,_ the 6th most weak, has been crossed off with _Greed, Gluttony_ and _Lust_ listed beside it. Greed and Gluttony are crossed off with Lust circled multiple times so Harry figures Lust was the correct location after Greed and Gluttony turned out wrong.

 

Same with Aludran, 5th weakest, crossed off with _Heresy_ written underneath it. Purud, 7th weak, is crossed through with the same location as Aludran, Heresy written beside it too. Muliphien, the _most_ weak at very last in 8th place, is crossed off with Malebolge as it's location - second to last level of hell.

 

When you get to the top four, none of them have been crossed through, but the each have locations/alleged locations.

 

Wezen - the 4th brightest - has _Lust_ written beside it. Nothing else.

 

Murzin - third brightest - seems to have a bit of confusion surrounding its location. It’s circled multiple times with question marks and it has two alleged locations underneath: _Cocytus_ and _Malebolge_ \- the last and most dangerous levels of hell.

 

Malebolge literally means “trenches of evil/evil pits” of hell. But those locations have question marks scribbled all over them as well.

 

Sirius is different from the rest. It’s location isn’t in hell.

 

The brightest star in the sky is the only one according to this map that is actually _still_ in the sky. _Firmament,_ also known as heaven. Although it’s misspelled as “firnament,” on this map.

 

Whoever wrote it wasn’t very literate, Harry notes.

 

Of course, the one that stands out from them all as well is Adara, second brightest star and 5th placement in Canis Major, formerly known as the brightest star in the _night_ sky, only outshined by the sun in the daytime.

 

This is the only one with two known locations that Harry can confirm as correct _himself_ that whoever wrote it knows what they’re talking about if they’re talking about Liam… which is very bad.

 

They know where he is. More specifically, _Sophia_ knows where he is, as she’s always known where he was almost everyday for the last year.

 

The first location being Earth - the only star noted out of them all to be connected to Earth. And then a red arrow drawn beside Earth… to _Lust._

 

 _“My… God.”_ Harry covers his mouth.

 

Even if the rest of the map still doesn’t sense, Harry can see a clear motive for Adara being on Earth and in Lust.

 

That’s where Narcissus was. _IS_.

 

“What even _is_ this?” Ben murmurs after a good 5 minutes. Harry shakes his head.

 

“I have _no_ idea.” He’s not lying by much. He doesn’t know what the fuck this is or what it means but he knows Liam is in trouble, wherever he is right now.

 

He quickly takes his phone out and snaps a few pictures of them all and sends it to Liam, advising him to show these ones to Lux and Zayn as fast as possible.

 

With the way these are marked up… Harry is getting that whoevers map this is looking for and possibly hunting down _stars._

 

They finally get to the last document as Ben has finally downloaded all 1,000 pages of it. This one is the most confusing of all:

 

  
                                                                                                  
                                                                                             

 

 

The part in Arabic is written backwards as Ben scans it on Google translate. Forwards, it reads,

 

_'Whip from Allah'_

 

 _“Scourge of God…”_ Harry whispers. It means the same thing. Ben nods in agreement.

 

Below that is the symbol of the sun with the moon sitting on top and a star in the middle of the sun.

 

Below the star is a spiral, which seems out of place. But the spiral there reminds Harry of the same exact spiral that was tattooed on Zayn’s Gluttony demon’s forehead.

 

As Harry looks at this without the star or the spiral, it reminds him of the same _exact_ concept of Liam and Zayn’s tattoos with the sun and moon together, only instead of them being inside each other like theirs, the moon on resting on _top_ of the sun. Like a crown.

 

“This is the horned God.” Ben tells Harry as he traces around the circle of the sun up with the moon crescent. Harry tilts his head a little as he squints.

 

“Huh… I guess I can see that…” He murmurs as he finds the tip of the moon crescents ends being horns for the sun, like a pair of horns on the suns head.

 

“Horned God…” Harry repeats as the connections all aligned in his mind.

 

The sun is the God. But this God has _horns_. 

 

_“The devil?”_

 

Harry thinks about the goat creature Safaa drew on Zayn’s rug to open the portal. That plus the star in the circle she also drew is the universal symbol of Satan.

 

Ben shakes his head.

 

“It’s _much_ more complicated than that.” He begins to explain.

 

“Sets of 3 like this is like a triple Goddess, like the Goddess of Necromancy with her 3 heads. _These_ specifically represent the sun, the moon, and the morning star. The sun is the “Father”, representing God.” Ben traces around the circle.

 

“This would be the master,” He traces over the star in the middle of the circle.

 

“And then the sage,” He finishes by tracing over the moon.

 

“The sun and moon together represent a perfect being on it's own as God. Alphaand Omega. Beginning and End. All and nothing. But add in the star and all three come together to make the symbol for a _complete_ lifeform past God. This written under “scourge of God” written _backwards_ basically translates to _“I will strike down God and become thee, perfect being,”_

 

Harry’s brows raise. Becoming God huh? Well… that’s pretty _arrogant._ And it sounds very familiar.

 

_Narcissus._

 

“What about this?” Harry points to the spiral beneath it all. Been scratches his head a little.

 

“I’m not sure _exactly_ how that plays into it. Spirals can represent rebirth… or evolution… it’s a pretty broad symbol.”

 

“Looks like a black hole to me. You guys are looking at it upside down.” Anthony chimes from the driver’s seat, scrutinising the image through the rearview mirror.

 

Harry and Ben both look up at him dumbly.

 

“Huh?”

 

“Turn it over. It’s a black hole guys.”

 

Anthony reaches behind him flips the laptop over:

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                             

 

 

 

 

 _“Flagellum dei_ doesn’t translate backwards. It translates to mean the opposite _upside down_ in theology.”

 

Harry forgets that Anthony was also in philosophy club with them before it kind of fell apart after the chaos started. Anthony’s finger points to the spiral on top of the image now.

 

“It goes beyond simply striking _God. ‘I will SWALLOW God and become a perfect being.’”_ He answers for them the true translation to the picture.

 

Harry and Ben both blink with wide eyes.

 

He’s _right._

 

A black hole is a _collapsed_ star that swallows _everything._ This black hole is already pictured to be inside the sun, above the moon. So... the morning star is a _black hole now._

  

But… swallowing God?

 

Who in the fuck would try to not only surpass but actually EAT God? How can you even _dream_ to ever be that fucking powerful? Unless…

 

 _“You drain power from others…”_ Harry murmurs aloud as they stare at all of the images together.

 

That’s what demons to gain life from humans. And that’s what black holes do to _stars._

 

Maybe there’s no difference at all. Draining life from a human is just that same as draining the light from a star.

 

The morning star isn’t just evil. This thing is trying to eat GOD.

 

Draining the life from stars seems like a pretty fucking good way to go about getting powerful enough to even _attempt_ to do something so horrendously arrogant. So _greedy._ So _Gluttonous. Hubristic and sinister_ … every last word in the book that will never paint a true picture of how _evil_ this masterminded image truly is.

 

And they’re using Manningtree as the grounds for it all.

 

They can’t get away with this. Someone has to DO something about this before they’re all dead. If they can consume the life from this small town, who’s to say they won’t take the whole country next when they’re done here? Fuck, they’ve apparently put the most powerful stars in the universe down for the taking. Even GOD in on the hitlist. What’s stopping them from taking the entire fucking planet? The whole UNIVERSE?

 

No one but a couple of teenagers? Hell no. They’ve been _doomed_ since before birth _._

 

Liam texts Harry back after a few minutes of silence goes by, the first time he’s actually replied to his texts all day.

 

He knows he’s annoying the hell out of him but this is a dire situation they’re being hammered relentlessly with so Liam’s gonna have to start answering his fucking texts if only to let Harry know he’s not in trouble and still alive down there.

 

**_How well can you translate Latin?_ **

 

Harry squints a little at the randomness of Liam’s reply right before he gets another immediately after.

 

This one seems a bit… _off._

 

His spelling is all over the place, like he rushed too fast to type it all out.

 

**_I hvae aaudio files. Trans it pls Z needs your HELP_ **

 

Harry quickly starts to call Liam then but he’s lurked forward as the car screeches when Anthony veers to the side like a maniac, throwing Harry and Ben out of their seats, to the ground on top of each other and waking a sleeping Mikey up with a face-full of the dash.

 

“OW!” He yells, punching Anthony in the arm.

 

_“Fucker.”_

 

“Anthony, what the hell, man!”

 

“TONY!” They all yell at him as he turns around in his own seat with his dark brown eyes wide in shock to look out of the back window.

 

“No _fucking_ way!” He shouts, throwing the car in reverse now.

 

“What’s wrong Anthony?” Ben ask him, worried now as he and Harry both crawl up again.

 

“I know I’m on 225mg of effexor right now but I am tripping off of my fucking ASS if you didn’t just see that!”

 

“See what?” Harry groans as the car stops.

 

Everyone looks out Mikey’s window in Anthony’s line of staring with crazy eyes until they all see it in the woods too, gasping in unison.

 

There's a ghost in the woods.

 

“Call Liam.” Mikey says, whipping around towards Harry, all of the sudden wide awake.

 

“Call him NOW!”

 

Harry fumbles for his phone clumsily while Anthony floors it, away from the opening in the woods.

 

As he looks at the phone, it turns out Liam’s already on. He actually answered when Harry called.

 

 _“Please, God please… stop,”_ Liam mumbles on the line. Harry puts the phone on speaker.

 

“What did he say?” Ben leans his ear down.

 

“I dunno… Liam I can’t hear you, can you hear us--”

 

 **_“_ ** _Just…_ **_STOP!”_ ** His demon voice echoes out through static like a bad reception, along with the hissing seer through the air of what sounds like lightning.

 

No one in the car is phased by the fact that it sounds like they’re on the phone with a demon since the signal is so bad. But even if they did know, none of that matters right now because there’s lots of crying and freaking out on the other line.

 

_Liam is in trouble._

 

“Pull over!” Harry shouts.

  
  
He’s been gone for too long and being in Lust has been anticipated already so that makes it a dangerous _trap-zone_. He doesn’t belong in the underworld and going to live in hell with Zayn for even one day was a disastrous plan from the get-go. Liam has to come back home, with or without Zayn NOW. And Harry’s coming to get him so they can get the hell out of this town for good.


	14. Zero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam discovers why Zayn has really been keeping him in the dark.

 

 

 

 

_“Love’s gonna get you killed. But pride’s gonna be the death of you, and you, and me.” ~Steve Lacy “PRIDE.”_

 

~*~

 

 

 

If you met a stranger in real life that you’ve known from a dream, would you ask them if they recognised you?

 

Or maybe the opposite. Meeting a someone in a dream as a stranger that you’ve known from real life.

 

Would you ask them then?

 

Zayn does the second one, almost every day. The same guy he’s always known often pops up in his dreams as a stranger but before he can talk to him, he disappears.

 

Liam wouldn’t be able to do either one. Because if it’s not a memory, he can’t see his dream, let alone the people in them. Even if the stranger in his dream was someone he’d known his entire life, if he saw them again in the next life, they’d be like a brand new person with a new identity.

 

In fact, so much has changed within the last month that if Liam went back in time to even 3 weeks ago, he would be a total stranger to _himself._

 

But out of everything that’s changed in such a short time period, Liam wouldn’t say it’s his friends he’s always known that have changed or even himself that’s changed the most. It’s how he sees every little speck of the world around him that has completely changed in his eyes now, forever, and not just because of his enhanced sight.

 

Even in living his very blinded life, the things he could see through his glasses would still look totally different if he went back and re-lived his entire life now. Like how he sees Zayn.

 

Zayn hasn’t really changed that much at all aside from the addition of Lux but Liam’s view of him has changed… _a lot._ Surface view and beyond.

 

For one thing, he’d see him in double now on the surface. One guy in front of him and another in the mirror. But the duality Liam now sees in Zayn is more literal. And Liam likes them both _a lot._

 

But if Liam saw Zayn again in the past, he’d see false eyes and false smiles below the surface of his flawless face.

 

He’d see lies.

 

The thing about lies is, they’re not all black and white. There’s many shades of grey lies as well, faded greys with little specs of different shades of colour. Some lies are justified. Some aren’t. Lies told out of kindness or to preserve dignity and innocence. Lies that spare pain, and lies to hide behind so your pain can’t be seen.

 

Lies that show you things that aren’t really there. Like happiness.

 

Before, he never would’ve considered Zayn liar, but just like Lux, he’s lied a _lot_. That’s not to say that Liam would see a liar now or a boy cursed in vain. He still sees his flawless Zayn. He’s just not as flawless as he’s appeared on the surface. Pun unintended.

 

Unfortunately, the one that _Zayn_ sees when he looks in the mirror isn’t the same person Liam sees that he’s always been in love with. Because Zayn looks at himself and sees someone he wants _dead_.

 

Liam isn’t sure if Zayn will ever like “Lux”. Or, in other words, _himself_ . What _he_ sees on the surface that makes him hate himself like that, Liam didn’t think he would ever understand why before. But the more he learns about his past, the more the reasons why become clear to him.

 

Before this happened, Zayn felt like he didn’t have an identity if he wasn’t looking at himself. And when he was, he still looked at that empty reflection like he hated it anyways so, Lux is really just a metaphor for how Zayn truly feels about himself more than the rest of his demons since Lux _is_ his identity. And Zayn hates who he is.

 

Liam _wishes_ he didn’t.

 

But, he’s thinking now that maybe Zayn can’t help it. His problem with himself didn’t come about in this life.

 

His internal issues date back to before he was even before he was born. Because in his past, he never even wanted to _look_ at himself and that has nothing to do with Lux.

 

There has to be a reason he’s never wanted and possibly always hated his identity.

 

This duality and stray in Zayn’s identity goes _much_ deeper than his reflection.

 

Lux told Liam that in his past, he lived his entire life from start to finish, _split_ into two opposite ways like he was two opposite people in one before he even seen his reflection.

 

He was a boy, and he was a flower.

 

He was a virgin, and he was impure.

 

He was Narcissus…. and he had no identity, a stranger to even himself.

 

You could’ve shown him a photo of his own face with a group of 10 other people and they all would’ve been strangers in his eyes.

 

Liam thinks the idea of him possibly hating who he was might’ve come from Adara being above him.

 

Above him as in, completely out of his reach.

 

Not to diagnose the guy with self-image, anti-narcissistic issues or self-hate or anything but… Liam’s actually finding a consistent pattern in his behaviour now that he knows so much about his past. The parallels are almost… _exact._

 

Narcissus didn’t want to be “Narcissus”. He even told people to call him Nars. Or… apparently even Zayn.

 

Narcissus wanted to recreate himself to be someone who could get close to the stars, just like how Zayn was willing to recreate himself to be someone who was closer to Liam, even if he had to change or renounce part of who he was. Liam doesn’t even have to ask why. Just like he told Tyler,

 

 _‘Why would you change yourself for someone else?’_ _  
__  
_ _  
__‘So he won't have to change for me.’_

 

It seems like Narcissus had the same idea.

 

A daffodil lives in the ground. And a human being lives on Earth. He couldn’t get to the stars if he stayed himself. He had to become someone else too. Maybe someone who could fly. Lux had to have gotten that from somewhere, right?

 

Narcissus had to become a perfect being to get to Adara.

 

Zayn thought he couldn’t get to Liam if he wasn’t pure.

 

So, what’s the difference between a pure being and a perfect being and a human being?

 

Well, for one thing, a human can also be pure. But they can never be perfect. The very nature of humanity is imperfect.

 

Someone _pure_ has absolutely no cardinal sin, clean and free of all things immoral. Not dirt or grime… just _nothing_ tainted in their spirit. For Zayn, that meant no sex or boys. Being a “cocksucker” which basically meant, to him, being _gay_ , which was contradictory anyways but whatever. Liam doesn’t get Zayn’s thought process behind how he was planning on moving things further, or _not_ moving further, with Liam that night with everything he ended up doing beforehand. He was a very contradictive person, just like in his past.

 

The point is, he was determined to change who he was regardless of anything so Liam wouldn’t have to. But being who he was wasn’t a _sin._ Sex and love isn’t a sin and being gay _definitely_ isn’t a sin, but Zayn’s been made to believe it is. Cause as far as he knew, Liam wasn’t gay and he didn’t like sex so those had to go so he could be pure like Liam.

 

A pure being can be a human stripped of all their mortified demons and reborn without sin. A baby is a pure being. And so is a virgin. Liam was a pure being. And Zayn wanted to be too so Liam didn’t have to change.

 

Of course, losing his virginity turned him into a fucking _demon_ … but Liam has learned thoroughly that whoever governs the universe, whether it’s the universe itself or an intelligent designer, has a pretty sick sense of humour.

 

Someone _perfect_ has everything, completely flawless. Every desirable quality and element of their being is at the highest, maximum level of absolute perfection.

 

For Narcissus, that meant him being human was a flaw, as human nature in and of itself is imperfect. He couldn’t get to where he wanted _just_ by being pure because Adara was more than _just_ a virgin. She was also a perfect being, made of absolute light. So, he had to be perfect to ever be with her too. And humans are not perfect beings.

 

A perfect being is like a God.

 

So, what's the difference between perfect and pure?

 

One is _all_ that is absolute in perfection, and the other is absolute in _nothing_ that is immoral. While they share traits in both being absolutes, they are on total opposite sides of their spectrums.

 

All vs. nothing. Like the universe vs. absolute zero. 100% vs. 0%.

 

Although in order to become a perfect being, you go about it the same way you become a pure being, it’s not a simple task.

 

In order to become a pure being, you must mortify your sins. Completely destroy them. And in order to become a perfect being, you must mortify your _flaws_.

 

In pursuing both, you perform self-sacrificing acts that take endurance, discipline and self-denial of indulgent pleasures to reach a goal and greater state of being, yes. They both put the sin to death, yes. And in both, to be further away from sin is to be closer to God.

 

But there is a _stark_ contrast between cleansing your body and soul of sin to seek sanctification and doing it to seek perfection.

 

One sacrifices their sin and rebirths them as something pure. But a mortal sacrificing their sin and re-creating themselves _to be_ an immortal being takes more than sacrificing their sin. It takes their entire mortal body.

 

Narcissus couldn’t just purge his sins. He had to sacrifice part of his human body as well as part of his actual humanity. He had to sacrifice part of his spirit and soul with it.

 

He had a choice in what he could do.

 

Hand his demons, which became his friends, over to death or trade the imperfect nature of his humanity? The choice was clear. But it wasn’t any easier than killing his friends. It was killing _himself_ instead, 7 times. Not just himself physically. Spiritually, mentally… just _everything_ he was, sat on the table, and sliced into little pieces.

 

Seeking purity can be simply fasting for 40 days and 40 nights in abstinence and celibacy or piously kneeling before God in prayer and praise. Zayn used to often do this during certain holidays and days of the week anyways.

 

But, seeking perfection… was _brutal_. It took a toll on his body, mind, and soul.

 

In order to become a perfect being, you have to strip away the imperfect nature of your humanity, _obtaining_ perfection by sacrificing part of who you are. Your flaws are part of what makes you human. Your personality. Your temperament. Your mind. Your skin and bone and DNA. And of course, your _soul._

 

The question of how much of your humanity can you sacrifice until you are no longer considered human wasn’t something Nars missed either. It was a focal point in how divided up his humanity and chose exactly what to sacrifice to reach his goal and how. Because there’s only so much he could sacrifice until he stripped away too much. The more you sacrifice, the closer you get to absolute zero where there’s nothing left of your former self.

 

Nothing but a shell of what was once a human body, because while 100/100 is a perfect unit, so is 0/0.

 

The difference between the two is: one is all, and the other is nothing.

 

Narcissus was… neither.

 

He wasn’t perfect nor was he pure. He purged his demons without killing them and somehow achieved immortality as a human being still. Instead of choosing 100/100 or 0/0, he managed to do the impossible: he split every piece of himself in half by choosing 50/50. But to him, that was easy. He was already born in dual states of being.

 

Narcissus was clever enough to outwit the difference. He found loopholes in his duality to, not obtain perfection, but get rid of his demons without destroying them. As in destroying his humanity. Instead of becoming perfect or pure, he became like a knife. A _double edged_ knife; unbreakable and having two contradictory aspects and possible outcomes of his next life.

 

Instead of mortifying his _demons_ like he would’ve done for purity, he mortified parts of his body instead so his impurities _and_ his imperfection would both still exist, only _outside_ of his body and he was reborn so the lost part of his physical body would grow anew again while his sins remained intact somewhere else in hell without actually tainting him anymore, by changing who he was physically and spiritually.

 

It was a pretty _damn_ clever loophole that death accepted.

 

Instead of sacrificing his humanity and touching a level of absolute zero or offing his demons so he could become flawless, he split the nature of his humanity _half_ and only purged one half with each demon so he could keep part of who he is as a _new human_ being.

 

Lux doesn’t know why he did this instead of just killing them. It would’ve been a hell of a lot easier if he’d just purged his demons and mortified them like normal but… he let them live and sacrificed himself instead by giving them human attributes so they could live too.

 

Liam wishes he could _ask_ him why he did everything the way he did, especially in _hell,_ and why he made it so much harder on himself to take the route that took so much from his body and soul and 1,000 years of his life when he didn’t _have_ to do all that.

 

If only he’d _remember_ completely _..._

 

Although he did alter himself spiritually and physically, the effects didn’t change who he was _mentally,_ unfortunately. His demons still existed somewhere else and it affected him enough for him to have the exact same mentality. And Liam knows that mentality is what got him cursed and what will continue to be the death of him.

 

His _ego_ : Thinking he has the power to change who he is.

 

So, he didn’t make a deal with death to break his cursed vanity. He did it to live again as a new person. But not that much really changed at all. His identity was still the same, right there staring back at him in his mirror.

 

The nature of his reflection having two definitions and multiple names and states of being because of what he purged with it was _not_ a coincidence by him. He meticulously chose each and every individual part of who he was that he would take out of his body so it would be put back together again outside of him to animate the lux of his vanity.

 

“Lux” by definition is a unit of fluxed light that is equal to one whole cavity of a tubular _organ_. Which means he could sacrifice something shiny that wasn’t physical and still make it count as a body part as long as it was lux. Like a lustrous reflection. Almost like the one he was forced to lust after against his will.

 

See what he did there?

 

He found something nonphysical in his body he could sacrifice in place of an organ: His name as a thought thrown into the lux of his vanity. Some personality here. Some humour there. And some kakos that was once an emotion for life.

 

Sacrificing all that would change his name.

 

When he was reborn, he would no longer be Narcissus. Whether that was killing himself or just figuratively sacrificing his identity, no one really knows because no one else was there to see how his final sacrifice went down but the two that it featured and neither of those guys can remember it.

 

Whether that left him with a new name and suicidal tendencies, no one truly knows but Zayn.   

 

Bottom line is, _all_ of his demons have a double entendre in their state of being like that because they are all a reflection of his own duality. Lux is only one example of that.

 

Even with Ava. Narcissus took on trepanning for Avaritia, being sacrificed material of brain matter from his cerebral cortex, which gave him the materialistic nature of his humanity. Liam's not sure if he did all this himself or if he had help but, thinking about how he purged parts of his body makes his skin crawl.

 

Trepanning is a surgical procedure where a hole is drilled into your _skull_ to reach your brain and if that doesn’t paint a picture of how _brutal_ is was to rid himself of his demons, imagine the other 7 body parts he had to divvy up.

 

But materialistic has more than one definition as well. Physically, there’s the material of your brain, spiritually, there’s the materialistic nature of greed, and _mentally_ , there’s the materialistic nature of _philosophy._ Nars only kept one _with_ him for the next life. His mentality.

 

To say that Zayn is materialistic right now can go down two paths.

 

Materialistic in the _vain_ sense that all one cares about is the things they greedily possess more than they care about people or the world around them gave birth to Avaritia, being the actual “material” of his brain who doesn’t care much for people as much as he does his clothes that he can never collect enough of. Even when it comes to his own kids.

 

Nars, of course, sacrificed that with his greed.

 

What was left of that in _him_ was the materialistic nature of _philosophy_ now - what Zayn was left with to this very day so he'd be a materialist of philosophy and care deeply about the world around him instead, having a profound interest in the philosophical drabbles of material matter that makes up the universe and wondering about its phenomena.

 

He traded materialism in greed for the philosophy of materialism, a clever loophole in keeping his humanity intact without sin, turning his materialism into an interest in philosophy instead of greed.

 

And so on and so forth, he continued to find loopholes in splitting his humanity in half to go along with parts of his physical body, keeping one part of himself whilst sacrificing another by leaving it behind.

 

With Zayn now, Liam can't help wondering how many sacrifices can he make until he has nothing left to sacrifice inside. Because _killing_ Lux now will be the _total_ _destruction_ of part of his soul… which Nars _never_ did specifically so he wouldn’t actually lose part of himself.

 

But… Zayn is determined to get rid of Lux for good now. For Liam.

 

Of course, Nars was never _possessed_ by his own demon but killing Lux will actually destroy his identity. Forever. He will _never_ remember who is without Lux. Not even if he looks at his reflection. And Liam has a _dire_ suspicion that maybe Zayn doesn’t _want_ to remember or even be who he is anymore, even without Liam thrown into the mess.

 

Narcissus didn’t, why would Zayn?

 

He mentioned something like that to Tyler too, _way_ before he was sacrificed and that’s the only way Liam knows that at least no one is compelling _Zayn_ to kill Lux or Lux to kill himself.

 

They’re doing that because Zayn wants to. Maybe he’s always wanted to.

 

He doesn't know how yet but, Liam is determined that there’s a way to save them both. They just need a little time to grow on each other. Maybe then, Zayn will see who he is isn't so flawed and deserving of death.

 

They have some time before the end.

 

For now, after a short race against time across the _roof_ , there’s a crash.

 

The clock ticks now in a countdown for how long they have until the chaos resumes it’s regularly scheduled program, unbeknownst to Liam who has no _idea_ what he’s just fallen into.

 

Liam writhes around on the floor, holding his back as he groans and turns over, pushing Zayn’s legs off of his face after they’ve both fell to the hard ground - Liam being Zayn’s cushion.

 

The endurance for how much shit he can handle today is impressing him how well his indestructible body takes it all. He should’ve broken his arm with that fall as both of their full weight landed on it but, all he’s got is his shoulder blade putting a hole in the rock, along with the rest of his body like an iron suit of armour.

 

His speed actually catches up with space and _actually_ demolished the ground under him in real time. Well, it feels like the ground is caving in, in slow motion but still, it’s fast enough for him to actually _see it_ . Not even _Lux_ can move as fast as Liam just was.

 

It makes him feel overpowered. Like he can take on _anything_. Even the devil himself.

 

Maybe Liam should stop getting ahead of himself today…

 

 _“Fuck,”_ Zayn moans turning over on his back to wince before he quickly sits up and paws all over Liam worriedly, who’s holding his head with one hand.

 

“I am so _so_ sorry,” Zayn cups Liam’s face as he starts to apologise profusely for hurting him but… he didn’t really hurt him at all so Liam doesn't want him to freak out over nothing.

 

“Lemme kiss it better,” Zayn plants kisses all over Liam’s face then, making him laugh as he blinks rapidly.

 

“You’re alright.” Liam bats him away absently as he blinks up at the hole in the ceiling now, looking at the marsh above them.

 

He and Harry _soared_ through a _locus amoenus_ before they got thrown through this portal.

 

The only known doorway to freedom from hell that’s existed in thousands of years is… right _there_. They could leave right now and never come back.

 

“It seems so… close.” He mutters to himself.

 

“What seems close?” Zayn looks around the living room with his nerves tweaking in paranoia.

 

The house is nice and warm and the only sounds he hears are Antonia and Alivia gossiping with some boys in their room down the hall. Which means there’s no adults in the house and Abraxas hasn’t come here yet. If he was anywhere nearby, there’d be no heat left in the air and it’s still toasty in here, as always.

 

Liam’s safe and everything is okay. For now. And this time, Zayn’s keeping it that way. For _good_.

 

“The… marsh,” Liam says as Zayn stands up, at the front door on a matter of seconds as he locks it and reaches over and shuts and locks the window and pulls the drapes closed, continuing to go around and bolt everything shut.

 

Liam watches him dash around, locking up the house with bitten lips, worry wrinkling his forehead, indicating that he’s _stressed_.

 

“Uh…. is everything okay…?” He asks slowly.

 

Zayn takes a few steps back as his shaky hands rise in front of him now, squeezing his fists so tight, his veins ripple.

 

“Yeah, everything’s fine, babe.” He assures him absently as he the wall visibly shifts with his clenched hands, making everything around them rocks once with dust pushing out of the rock. It’s as if he’s locked the entire house down like a vault.

 

His balled up fists fall at his sides now in conviction. Now, everyone outside is staying outside because _no one_ can get in.

 

 _‘What about the marsh, genius? There’s still an open entrance. If he’s out in fucking Manningtree right now, he’ll still have to come BACK here through the house!’_ Lux hisses at him inside.

 

 _‘Obviously there's no way to close the goddamn marsh right now. Liam’s going back to the room, he won’t see him regardless. If you hadn’t burned down the fucking PARK, none of this shit would be happening!’_ He hisses back at him.

 

_‘I didn’t know he would LOOK LIKE THAT OUTSIDE!’_

 

 _‘Just SHUT UP_ **_._ ** _You’ve done ENOUGH._ **_’_ **

 

Lux shuts up now, regretfully.

 

 _‘This is what happens when you show your ass without thinking. Now, we can’t go ANYWHERE without him in my sight so thank you for being a fucking JACKASS!’_ Zayn scolds him.

 

The marsh is the only way _anyone_ can get in now… or out. As long as he locks his house, no one can get inside unless he wants them to but he can’t stop _anything_ from coming and going through the marsh.

 

Liam does _not_ like Zayn like this. All this running around trying to cover the window and lock the walls and doors is making him _very_ nervous.

 

How can he trust Zayn if Zayn won’t even trust him enough to tell him what’s wrong?

 

This is the problem now. Somehow, they both trust _Lux_ more than they trust _each other._

 

If they’re in some kind of danger that’s _more_ the just the police persecuting Lux for his antics, then Liam would like to be told.

 

The police aren’t here like Lux said they would be. Which is a red flag that something _bigger_ is coming.

 

“Z, seriously, what’s going on?” Liam tries to stand up now but Zayn hops up into his arms with a smile, kissing Liam’s cheek as he inhales, batting his eyelashes against the side of his face ticklishly in the process.

 

Liam sighs heavily when he catches him with his hands going under his bum, hiking him up more securely when he wraps his legs around Liam’s waist. One of Zayn’s hands hook around Liam’s neck while the other pulls Liam’s hand up behind his backside so Liam is groping him, indicating that he wants a “back rub”.

 

 _“Bedroom. Now. That's what's going on.”_ He says against Liam’s ear, caressing the back of his neck with his fingers, prodding his neck bone. Liam rolls his eyes but obliges, carrying him to their room.

 

He tilts his head away when Zayn’s lips press into his birthmark on his throat, kissing his heart.

 

He _knows_ Zayn isn’t hungry after Lux ate all that aether up there so he’s not distracting Liam with sex or making out so they don’t talk. He’s been doing that since Liam got here and he doesn’t have hunger as an excuse for neglecting important priorities now.

 

They were still in the middle of a very important conversation and Liam still has a couple things he wants to get off his chest so they’re not resuming bedroom activities until _everything_ is clear in the air right now. Because this thick air right now could gag 10-inch wide airway. But maybe that’s because there is no air and they’re inside a furnace. Still, Liam needs to finish this discussion.

 

He kicks the door closed behind them before he drops Zayn off on their bed.

 

When he starts to unbutton Liam’s jeans, Liam obliges again, letting them come down and pool around in feet cause it’s always so hot in here. Not like outside but still dense like a sauna without any moisture, so he wants to strip down to his pants anyways. He stops Zayn from taking his t-shirt off though, holding onto Zayn’s wrists when he hands creep up Liam’s waist with his thumbprints pressing into Liam’s v-line, smoothing up and down as he grins.

 

 _“Have you ever put a tie around a man’s neck?”_ Zayn asks him, slowly, as Liam climbs out of his jeans, onto the bed with Zayn cheesing at him as he pulls off Zayn’s baggy jeans for him, throwing them to the side.

 

“Have I ever tied a _tie?”_

 

“No,” Zayn grips his collar, while one hand fumbles into their nightstand... where condoms are.

 

 

“Tied it for another _guy_.” he reiterates.

 

Liam squints at him as he laughs at such the bizarre, _random_ things Zayn’s says, unsure of where he's going with this.

 

 _“What are you even talking about right now?”_ He shakes his head at him, “Have you fucked an ad executive or summat?”

 

 _“No.”_ Zayn laughs before he pauses as his head tilts upwards to re-think that.

 

“Actually… I think there might’ve been some roleplay in this really hot threesome once--”

 

 _“Shut up,”_ Liam shakes his head as he pushes Zayn’s laughing face away, pulling Liam back with him by the collar of his shirt but Liam holds himself over Zayn on his arms so he doesn’t fall with him.

 

“Why are you asking me about ties?”

 

“Because,” Zayn sits up again suddenly, getting in Liam’s face as his hand wraps around Liam’s throat gently with a satin black tie Liam's never seen before dangling between his fingers as he wraps it around his neck like he's gonna tie it for him, making him gasp when Zayn's other hand flits up his shirt, smoothing back down his stomach slowly.

 

 _“You get off on being choked,”_ Zayn’s breath warms on Liam’s lips as they skid against each other, his hand migrating down Liam’s body.

 

_“....also known as erotic asphyxiation, which I love.”_

 

 _“What does this have to do with ties?”_ Liam breathes out shaky.

 

 _“That rushed excitement you feel when someone strangles you doesn’t feel_ nearly _as sexy as the one doing the choking.”_

 

 _“So putting a tie on a man is sexier than taking it off?”_ Liam adds for him now that he realises Zayn is talking about sex.

 

Zayn nods.

 

 _“... And you wanna put a tie around my neck?”_ Liam nods down towards the tie in his hand that materialised out of thin air.

 

Zayn nods again.

 

_"... if you wanna use it,"_

 

_“Is that your subtle way of asking to choke me?”_

 

_“That’s my subtle way of saying I wanted to try something with you with a tie--”_

 

"What  _else_ have you got in here, huh?" Liam reaches into the nightstand before Zayn can stop him, pulling out an ipod touch with very old-fashioned headphones attached with confused eyebrows.

 

Liam turns it over and sees it actually _works_. There's music and everything on it. Mostly, rap and hip-hop and alternative R &B.

 

**_Tyler, the Creator_ **

 

**_James Blake_ **

 

**_The Internet_ **

 

**_FKA Twigs_ **

 

**_Steve Lacy_ **

Liam scrolls through it in total bafflement.

 

_What the hell?_

 

He didn't even know Zayn listened to this kind of music. He was always more into bands than individual artists.

 

The only thing he recognises as anything Zayn's likes is The Internet because they're the only one's in there that's a band and Zayn had a huge crush on the bass guitarist last year.

 

"When did you get this stuff?" Liam laughs, "I didn't even know you liked rap music--"

 

"That's not _mine."_ Zayn snatches it from him and throws it back in the nightstand, closing it shut.

 

_Oh..._

 

Liam keeps forgetting that this was Lux's room _first_ and all that stuff in there is _his._ So he likes music too. Of course he does, who doesn't?

 

Except, the kind of music he listens to is so unexpected. He can't even picture Lux listening to music. Liam almost laughs trying to picture Lux relaxing to Odd Future.

 

"Anyways," Zayn moves one, "Back to what we were saying--"

 

“We’re not done _talking._ ” Liam says now as he takes the tie from Zayn, holding behind his back so this doesn’t go too far.

 

This is a _distraction_ and Liam knows that something is _wrong._

 

“It looks like we are to _me.”_ he wraps his arms around Liam’s neck again as he pulls him down on top, trying to reach behind him but Liam unhooks his neck, ducking under it out of his grasp so his head pops back up, face to face with Zayn and his hazel eyes with the faded-grey amber hiding behind the brown.

 

Liam’s hair flops up over his eyes when his head pops back up so Zayn blows out of his eyelashes for him, making Liam blink rapidly.

 

“It _always_ looks like that to you.” He smiles tightly with Zayn’s wrists writhing around in his hands, trying to break out of Liam’s grip _._

 

“It’s very unlady-like to talk with our mouths full or _gagged._ ”

 

“You don't _have_ a gag." Zayn points out. "Which is impressive and all but, you’d be surprised at what I can do with my _mouth_ full.”

 

“I think I’ve seen a pretty good deal.” Liam says but Zayn bites into his lips as his head nods sideways in disagreement.

 

“No… you _really_ haven’t.” Zayn laughs, snatching his wrists out of Liam’s hand finally and smoothing down Liam’s stomach before latching onto his pants.

 

“Your poor little virgins eyes,” He sighs as he brings Liam up to his face from gently yanking him closer by the hem of his underwear.

 

“We can get some soap and wash them out if you don’t wanna play _dirty…_ ”

 

Liam grasps Zayn’s hands off and twists their fingers together despite Zayn trying to twist his hand down Liam’s shorts, but Liam holds his place firmly.

 

“But the image is still in my head. Can’t clean that up with soap.” He counters.

 

“Gotta bleach your brain too I guess.” Zayn shrugs.

 

“How?”

 

“Snort it up your nose.”

 

Liam bends back as he laughs now, shoving Zayn’s hands away in the process to get this grinning Zayn away from him with his fucked up sense of humour.

 

“You’re trying to _kill_ me now?”

 

“No.” Zayn shakes his head with a quaint little smile, like he’s at total peace with himself. He looks at Liam like he’s admiring art as his eyes focus on every individual part of his face.

 

“I’d never let anyone kill you.” He says as his fingers come up to brush Liam’s curls off his head. Liam’s eyes look up at his tatted wrist as he thumbs at a loose curl.

 

“I’d die for you.”

 

Liam’s smile falters a little as he blinks down, slowly looking over the content smile Zayn still wears despite how _dark_ his “joking” always manages to turn when he’s not being dirty that doesn’t match his eyes.

 

That was the only thing Zayn could never match that Liam can see now that he didn’t notice before, more than just not noticing that Zayn is always looking at himself in his eyes.

 

His eyes never match his smile.

 

He could show up dressed to the 9 any day of any given week with his leather jacket matching his Louis Vuitton jeans matching his perfectly clean and pristine trainers and he could style his shaggy hair to match his shaggy jeans too. But his eyes were always elsewhere to the rest of his face.

 

“I’d do anything for you.” He adds, not to Liam’s reassurance of the growing unease inside him now.

 

“Why should _anyone_ have to die?” He says now, taking Zayn’s hand again.

 

“Quid pro quo. Equivalent exchange in something for something.” Zayn shrugs. He rubs over Liam’s hand then.

 

“Sometimes you gotta die to truly live.”

 

Liam frowns completely at Zayn _gloomy_ joke now, seeing his eyes get all glossy at his own words, like always. But Zayn’s not high so his glossy eyes are from himself even though he’s smiling.

 

Maybe he’s so used to laughing about it that he doesn’t even realise he doesn’t really find the dark things he says when he’s making fun of himself as actually funny. Call himself some derogatory name or make light of his vanity as something to laugh about when it might’ve been something he used to cry about. Because while he may laugh about it now and urge everyone else to laugh with him, it doesn’t ever reach his glossy eyes that he’s laughing.

 

Most times, his eyes are shiny and red anyways from his veins dilating when he’s high. But Liam has been wondering lately if that was really from him being high or maybe actually… _crying_ inside _._ Because he can hold back actual tears but he can’t stop the subtle redness from his veins dilating naturally on their own, seemingly all out of habit. He’s just made it a habit to laugh now as well.

 

Zayn is very blunt. He’s always been blunt. But he makes it sound like a joke so you don’t take it seriously, which of course since Lux got his black humour, is _also_ how he talks.

 

Except, Zayn would get inebriated so he couldn’t be held accountable for what he says or does just in case someone calls him out on it. Liam only knows for sure that that’s what he does to conceal the fact that he’s breaking inside because that’s what Zayn actually _told_ him he was gonna do if his spontaneous attempt at coming onto Liam at the party backfired.

 

Just laugh it off like it’s a game. But… it’s not to him. He couldn’t even manage to laugh through it then.

 

If Liam replayed every morbid or questionable thing Zayn has ever “jokingly” said or did to him or anyone else, it’d be like he was talking in code - which Ari said Nars did very often. Like secretly crying for help. Saying things one way and meaning it in another by telling him fucked up things up front with a laugh attached to it.

 

In the word’s of Lemony Snicket, the best way to keep a secret: tell it to everyone and pretend like you’re joking. It’s part of the reason Liam didn’t believe him when he first told Liam he was possessed.

 

When he jokes about _death,_ wanting to die or offing himself… it’s not really a joke to Liam anymore.

 

He gets what they mean now when they say ignorance is bliss and that people who know everything are often times the saddest. Because with everything Liam has knowledge of now, he sees Zayn in a whole new light. And it’s real, heart-wrenchingly _sad…_ to fully see him in the light.

 

Zayn’s humour is actually really fucked up and not at all anything Liam should be laughing at.

 

Maybe if they took a break from all this somewhere else, they could get revitalised. He can’t diagnose Zayn as depressed himself but he knows a lot about mental health and Zayn’s definitely shown major signs of being ill if he paid attention to his behaviour before.

 

Being in hell can’t be good for _anyone’s_ health. Especially your mental health, to be surrounded by darkness and evil constantly. Not for long periods of time anyways. Not even for a demon who isn’t _always_ a demon but still caged like one. And definitely not for 1,000 straight years.

 

It gets quiet all of the sudden as Zayn frowns when Liam’s silence translates his unease with everything he’s got on his mind.

 

“Hey… you got all quiet on me. ”

 

Liam sits up with him and takes his hands now instead of pushing him away again.

 

“What if we just… left?” He suggests hesitantly.

 

He knows Zayn will say no and that he has “stuff to do,” so he quickly elaborates before he does, talking at rapid speed to get everything he has to say out before Zayn can say anything.

 

“I know you can’t leave straight away but, just for a little while? We can finally go on that _date_ together _._ Completely outside of Manningtree and come back before the day even ends. Did you see how _fast_ I was going? The ground was still caving in. It’ll be like you never even left!”

 

 _“Liam,”_ Zayn stops him and from his tone, Liam already knows he’s shooting down the entire idea.

 

Liam’s face falls now with his eyes closed. At least he tried.

 

“Hey,”

 

Liam looks up at Zayn again as he’s leaning his head down in front of Liam with a smile, moving his knuckle under his own chin and pointing towards the ceiling.

 

_Chin up._

 

It’s such a simple gesture. But it means so much more to them than a simple hand sign.

 

Liam smiles really wide at him.

 

He hasn’t seen that in a while and seeing it now makes him light up inside cause it’s such a classic Zayn thing to do.

 

Zayn always told Liam that he still wins regardless of anything within _himself_ when he doesn’t let the situation overcome him and keeps his head up. Because then, _he_ overcomes the situation and no one could take _that_ victory away from him, however small it is.

 

Their victory right now: despite being stuck in the middle of a raging storm, they’re together in the eye and it’s calm.

 

Well… calm _for now_. It never really stays calm for very long with them anymore.

 

Even if they can’t leave yet, where they are isn’t the very worst possible.

 

He can’t control the situation - or the storm - but he can control what he does in it.

 

_“So we keep our chins up. Towards those clouds of yours, bean.”_

 

Zayn was always the little poet.

 

The perks of having an old soul; you’re full of wisdom beyond your years.

 

Despite everything he goes through, Zayn still manages to actually make Liam feel good despite being stuck in this small riot.

 

Just like he did at the game, despite the asshole that was harassing him, Zayn ignored his own problems for a moment to remind Liam not to let the disappointing trials of the bench keep him focused on what he _couldn’t_ control - like his eyesight holding him back - and instead focused on what he _could_ control - where he looked with those eyes, _up_.

 

Although, it was usually towards his cheerleader, showing up to every single one of Liam’s matches to cheer him on as if he was the star of the game.

 

This thing with Zayn disregarding his own HUGE problems for Liam’s small ones is actually… really bad. Because Liam knows if he had to, Zayn really would _die_ for Liam. Or even _kill_ someone for him.

 

But he can still cheer him up just the same with something as simple as one of his very _Zayn_ gestures, saying it all without having to utter one word _._

 

“ _God,_ I love you.” Liam wears these words well on Zayn when he exhales deeply. It doesn’t matter how many times they tell each other. It warms them both.

 

It _really_ warms up inside in Liam - literally - as that invisible part of him under his skin he just discovered today comes alive again.

 

It’s not so blistering without the hellfire but the small tinge of it feels just as warm as sunlight on his cheeks as it engulfs his heart and lights up across his face when he’s leaning into Zayn but Zayn stops him with his hands pushing against his chest, eyes going _wide_.

 

_“Whoa.”_

 

“What?” Liam stops as he looks at Zayn.

 

His hazel eyes grow over Liam’s face, seeing how Liam’s cheeks glow from his blushing, beaming through his cheeks and glowing all over his face.

 

It’s… _pink_ . Of course it’s pink, he _blushing_ but it shines through his skin like a lightbulb. He looks like a real life angel with a blushing aureola, like a _halo_ all over him.

 

Harry’s aura sat on his head and made it look like he was sitting in indigo smoke. But _Liam’s_ shines through his eyes and lights up his face.

 

“Wow…” Zayn murmurs as he blinks slowly. The light in his eyes really is almost _blinding._ Zayn feels like a deer in headlights with the stars in his eyes he always finds when he looks at Liam.

 

Liam through Lux’s eyes was pretty intense too. He’s _gorgeous._

 

 _‘He doesn’t always look like that, stupid. He’s just blushing.’_ Lux rolls his eyes, looking away from Liam inside so Zayn can’t see it anymore which would normally tick Zayn off but he’s too stupefied to even think about Lux right now, thinking about how Liam _really_ looks now when he blushes.

 

“What?” Liam laughs as his blush softens so it quiets down on his cheeks.

 

 _‘Did you… show him how to do THAT?’_ Zayn asks Lux inside, amazed. Lux laughs.

 

 _‘I didn’t know it would look like that. He actually figured it out on his own. He showed_ himself _how to do that… I don’t know if he realises what it looks like since he can’t see himself but I’m sure he can feel it glowing inside him.’_

 

Zayn already knows he can’t see himself. He could never see how beautiful he is, just like a butterfly can’t see how marvelous their wings are.

 

They really are _perfect_ opposites.

 

As if he needed confirmation that Liam really is a star’s life and light.

 

Lux had a theory that Liam’s case of “resting bitch face” - or thanatoid, when he spaces out and actually looks dead. He thinks part of Liam actually _has_ been dead. Or at least dormant.

 

His light.

 

After Liam finally confessed to Zayn that he really does feel dead inside sometimes, Lux knew that might’ve been why and it's only confirmed for him that Liam might really still have everything Adara did.

 

Adara was known for being a bit… _dead_ inside… for thousands of years until 1,000 years ago, she suddenly becomes the brightest star in the sky then _actually_ dies, officially, when you-know-who leaves the surface.

 

Stars all have their names and appearances and qualities but they also have their legacy. The night star, the dog star, the morning star, the North star, ect.

 

Although Adara made things pink in the sky all the time, she was known as the “dying star”. That’s just how his brother always referred to her as.

 

_“That dying star.”_

 

Light is sensitive and delicate on its own. It’s pure. Like some human souls. Like _Liam’s_.

 

It can die out and come to very easily. Especially when it comes to darkness and evil. Liam’s has been battling against at lot of demons his entire life so the thickened skin he’s grown has actually softened in his case so he could leave his body to escape the trials of all that battling. Hence when he looks dead when he’s still in his body, zoning out. It’s not just his emotion… it’s part of his actual soul that dies a little.

 

Liam has been taking emotional, physical and mental beatings from his peers, his family, and even Zayn - each in their own cruel way that took a toll on him inside.

 

His demons with his peers surfaced with bullying, which killed him a little inside every day as a kid. And even more as a teenager in the shark tank of the locker rooms for the last 3 years.

 

His demons with his family surfaced with his dad, which… killed him a _lot_ every time he looked at himself and saw a stranger. And then, his demons with Zayn.

 

Those ones surface every time Zayn tries to make love to him now. Everytime he watched Zayn kiss someone else… was _torturous_ in general as it was already _._ But watching it happen with people _everyone_ knew had just _shit_ on Liam the day before was heartbreaking.

 

Now that his clairvoyance has decided to join in on the ass-kicking, watching him _fuck_ all those boys kills him a little bit more every time he sees it.

 

As far as Lux is concerned, Liam hasn’t been in a stable place in his body since _birth_ so all that added shit spat at him from his family and friends through the years only made that delicate part of him that spaces out die even more than it already was.

 

Admitting that he doesn’t feel like a whole person isn’t normal. Feeling parts of him _dying_ isn’t normal at all. Revisiting those dead parts of him in his dreams most definitely ISN’T normal. Whether those parts of him are his emotions or senses (like his sight) or even maybe his _memories_ that die, Liam still retrieves _all_ of it in his dreams.

 

That means Liam even projects in his _sleep_ and visits other worlds easily, which Lux already knew anyways but that still baffles him about Liam’s body. Because if he projects when he’s asleep _and_ when he’s awake and if he actually feels parts of himself absent from his body for long periods of time, like his emotions and senses and his lost memory, then that means Liam basically _never_ stops projecting parts of himself. Even parts that _Lux_ apparently can’t see or sense at all. Which means Liam goes on planes that Lux can’t even perceive. That’s almost like part of Liam being _completely_ invisible on this plane to the point where he doesn’t even show up on the visible spectrum of a _demon’s_ eyes. Or maybe… moving too fast for even a _glimpse_ of him to be caught. Which is fucking incredible. Lux has NEVER heard of anything moving that fast. That’s… incredibly _dangerous_ speed.

 

Because something that moves that fast is _constantly_ moving, like a hummingbird's heartbeat. A hummingbird’s heart moves so fast, it almost sounds like one constant note so you can’t even tell that it’s beating. But the thing about that constant note is, its solidity could be equivalent to 100/100 or 0/0 - one possibility is alive and the other is _dead_. Since it moves so fast, the fact that you can’t tell if it’s beating or not means you don’t know if it’s alive or dead.

 

There’s only a few things that are that fast, and even _fewer_ things that are fast enough for even a _demon_ to be rendered too slow to catch alive. One of them, of course, is light. So Liam wouldn’t actually be invisible to Lux or any other demon. In that case, that part of Liam would just be moving too _fast_ for anyone to register in time. Because light surpasses time.

 

If you go faster than light, you could return before you’ve even left and _nothing_ is supposed to be that fast but Death.

 

That kind of plane is like a _reverse_ effect of a slow-motion etheric plane. Instead of time moving too slow around a physical object, it touches a level of _absolute zero_ around a non-physical object, so time virtually doesn’t exist to it. Like dividing by zero… which Lux didn’t even know was fucking possible. Probably because dividing by zero _is_ impossible.

 

How can you be fast enough to return to something before you’ve even left? You can’t. Light can’t even go that fast. You’d have to surpass the speed of light itself and the next speed past light is _sudden death_.

 

How can someone that isn’t _Death_ move fast enough for _time_ not to exist _?_

 

Regardless of how fucking impossible that literally is, one thing remains that Lux is still stuck on with Liam: what the fuck _is_ he?

 

A soul isn’t supposed to leave _any_ vessel as often as Liam does without dying. Especially for a _human._

 

From Lux’s understanding, there’s a huge difference between astral projection and dying although they do share traits and are closely related.

 

During both, you leave your physical body and transition to a new destination.

 

The difference being at the end of you astral journey, you come back to your body in the same life.

 

Astral projection is temporary. Death is permanent.

 

But there’s also a difference between dying and _being_ killed. You can avoid dying because that’s a process your life builds around. But you can’t avoid _being_ killed. That just happens.

 

Whichever one happens, you still die. When _humans_ die, Lux has always been taught that they completely leave their physical forms and their corporeal body immediately begins to decompose into the earth after it’s freed the life it once contained because of its receptacle nature, allowing for them to transcend into a new life after their body is recycled while they go elsewhere, to their next destination.

 

Whether you descend into a dense, etheric plane or ascend into a lighter, astral plane or stay on a physical plane or even _disappear_ into no plane, like black hole or void in space and obliterate totally into nothing if your life is actually taken - or _stolen_ \- from you, you don’t come back to your body in the same life once you’re dead.

 

Narcissus made a deal with death to keep his life forever. His curse kept his body so he could continue to stare his same face until he learned his lesson forever as well.

 

With death, if you’re not immortal, you might transition into a new body, or go to hell, or heaven or maybe even nowhere, into oblivion. The possibilities are endless because there are endless worlds and universes you might transition to.

 

With _astral projection_ , you leave your body temporarily. Typically for no more than a few hours at the very max. If you stay gone for too long, your body will eventually begin to die as the soul transitions into the other side.

 

Most humans experience this with near-death experiences, transcendental meditation or even lucid dreaming. It’s rare, but not impossible to leave your body without dying.

 

Liam is beyond Lux’s comprehension in more ways than just what the hell kind of human he even is. He’s never heard of _anything_ like Liam, human or otherwise.

 

For one, his body’s nature isn’t completely receptacle.

 

His skin is like water. It can contain him like any other human body but light can shine through him and he can stay inside or slip out with no effort at all. He doesn’t have to meditate or fall asleep or have a near-death experience or even focus at all, leaving as easily as walking out of a door. He’s soft enough to penetrate though a _mirror_ without breaking it which is… yeah that’s something Lux has never seen anyone else do either.

 

For another thing… he can stay completely detached from not only his emotions and thoughts but also his entire physical form for _days…_ which is _way_ longer than anyone should.

 

He does something you’re not supposed to do until you’re _actually_ dead - completely leave his physical form and casually ascend into the other side of his life whenever the fuck he feels like it.

 

Death to Liam’s body… is _temporary_ and astral projection is _permanent._

 

Part of him died many times and yet he still comes back to the _light…._ literally. And light is not faster than death. But Liam somehow _is._

 

Liam’s always known for himself that he was fast. It’s why he tried out for football in the first place 3 years ago. Maybe he’s never been _light-speed_ fast before but, faster than what people think. But, he always sat on the bench because of his sight so he could never show off his skill to anyone but himself. His pit has amplified his _body's_ capability of how fast he can go but Liam outside of his body is like a shooting star. He just never knew the full extent of it. Or maybe never noticed it as anything extraordinary, just like himself.

 

Liam’s spaced out for an entire _day_ before and got back before death could take him. Now if that doesn’t tell you how fucking fast he _actually_ is outside of his body, consider the star. She died a little every time the moon opened it’s eyes and she came to life again when the sun came back, many times in one lifetime before Narcissus was even born. And then when he was, she never died again. Well, she _did_ but she always came back brighter than ever.

 

And then, she _did_ die again, permanently. When Narcissus disappeared.

 

Wherever _she_ went when she died each time, well… maybe only Liam knows. Liam knows when to come back to his body before he dies somehow too.

 

Lux would _love_ to ask him where the hell he goes when he leaves and how the fuck does he know when to come back but, all Liam ever wants to talk about is sex, demons or Zayn.

 

Whenever he asks Liam where he goes, he just says he’s “dreaming,” and he just wakes up, as if that’s a sensible answer. But, Lux supposes that makes perfect sense to Liam because he’s been calling it that his entire life.  

 

Lux has _one_ idea of where Liam _might_ be going - or getting close to anyways - when he leaves his body that’s seemingly killing him the closer he gets to it before he’s rushed back into his body.

 

There’s only ONE place in the totality of existence where time doesn’t existence. Where everything in life converges to meet the end of their loops before going to the otherside.

 

Where Death lives.

 

And if Liam gets stuck _there_ …. Lux has no idea what would happen to him. Because that place is spinning around in the middle of space on a tempus and _no one_ can save Liam if he gets stuck there.

 

Lux doesn’t know _who_ the fuck told Liam that going there is the answer to their dilemma because all that will do is get him killed after he finds _Death_ and land him a trip with Charon to the underworld for breaking the law. Because no one is allowed there _but_ Death.

 

Charon just gets paid a shit load of coins in that situation.

 

And Zayn needs to fucking tell him why he can’t run around in hell showing off his fucking _light-speed._ His identity will be revealed to all of hell.

 

Everyone will know who he is, being with _Zayn_ , and he’ll either get sucked into a fucking black hole or stuck on that tempus. Either way, Liam would die, because you can only cheat death so many times and Lux is certain that Liam has gotta be in the triple digits by now from how much he’s been dissociating for the last 17 years.

 

He doesn’t just dance _around_ Death. He speeds right past him and joyrides around on the other side, chilling out to his heart’s content and comes back before death can even blink.

 

Lux figures that even if he somehow manages to survive outside of his body here or in general, after being gone for 3 days, his _body_ would actually die just from the lack of sustenance but, the fact that Liam can do that at all should be fucking impossible regardless of _anything_.

 

Somehow… Liam leaves and always comes back without getting lost in those other worlds - like that tempus where Death lives.

 

But Lux doesn’t know how Liam’s light works or how he projects or how he knows when to come back.

 

Lux doesn’t even know much about stars or their light anyways, let alone even try to understand _Liam_ . He can’t teach him _anything_ about projection when he doesn’t know anything about it, just like he can’t teach him anything about clairvoyance.

 

He’s heard legends about astral beings and angels and all those Godly beings disguising themselves as human sometimes and hiding in other worlds and he knows a few Gods that actually _do_ disguise themselves as human on a daily basis. Like Adonis, who usually lives in L.A when he’s not in Lust.

 

He spends more time on Earth than anyone Lux has ever met besides his brother and sister.

 

But the legends about _stars_ were always just a myth to him until he met Liam. He’s never even seen one up close. Even _Lux_ would die if he got too close to a star because their bodies are supposed to be extremely hot. Get too close to the sun, and you’ll get burned. Get too close to a star and you’ll die. That’s what everyone in hell always says. His friend Icarus tells the story of how his waxed wings lost their battle against the sun all the time.

 

But that’s the thing about Liam. He’s not a _star_ and he’s not “disguised” as human _._ Everything he sees is everything Liam actually is. Lux doesn’t know _anything_ about how Liam’s body contains him or where he really goes for sure when he leaves or how he manages to actually beat death in the race to his body so, trying to figure him out is really hard with the lack of information on how beings like him even exist and live since as far as even G was concerned, nothing like Liam has ever existed before.

 

Like a _human_ super-star.

 

The tempus just seems logical solely because the only thing that beats time and exists past the light barrier, the _only_ 2 things are fast enough to reach a tempus, is light and death.

 

Liam’s _life_ is light. Being reckless with it will be his ultimate doom but, he’s been getting on fine with it for the most part his entire life because he’s still alive. Lux just doesn’t want him to hurt himself. Or anyone _else_ to hurt him like they have been. Especially if the wrong people know who he is. Because if Liam really _is_ Adara… then his identity in hell needs to stay a _secret_.

 

There’s all kinds of old legends about stars collapsing and falling out of the sky and Lux doesn’t know much about it but they aren’t _good_ legends.

 

Stars die when they leave the sky.

 

Lux doesn’t even know if any of those myths would apply to Liam because he isn’t a star.

 

The most concrete thing Lux knows for sure at this point is that Adara was known to have thrived in firelight because she’d burn brighter when the sun was out. The brighter a star is, the more powerful it is.

 

He knew the hellfire wouldn’t _kill_ Liam - because of his pit.

 

He thought it might sting him from the burn just a bit but… he seemed to really enjoy the feeling of burning alive when he brought him outside, way more than any normal human being would. So Lux is learning a lot about… whatever Liam is. Now he knows for sure the daylight thing accurately makes him stronger, considering how Liam looks and reacted to being in hellfire.

 

Now that his light has been ignited, it seems like it’s fully alive again and thriving more than ever.

 

Lux sparked Liam’s _visible_ light inside. Okay, Zayn is a little jealous. But he can’t be upset. He’s glowing right now because of _Zayn_ and the way the light feels on his skin in front of him even though he can’t see it… _fuck_ it feels amazing. Like he’s getting a tan from the gentle sunlight Liam is oozing and planting kisses all over Zayn’s skin.

 

He wants to bathe in it and wear it like perfume.

 

“God _damn_ this feels good.” Zayn’s head nods back as his skin takes to the light. It’s not necessarily hot like _actual_ sunlight. It’s just indescribably gentle on his skin.

 

“What does?” Liam laughs, “And why are you _staring_ at me like that?”

 

He tucks his chin in and hides it as his blush deepens.

 

Zayn’s looks at his lovely baby-red cheeks as he snorts shaking his head a little in amazement.

 

“Cause _you’re_ wow. That’s why. Being around you always feels good. You always radiate this calm energy that I can feel all over me and now I actually _seen_ it.” He smiles as his eyes fall down Liam’s face, pinching under his chin as he lifts it back up again when Liam shies away into himself.

 

“... feel _so fucking good_ and you don’t even have to _touch_ me.” His tone dips low as his arm hooks under Liam’s knee as he yanks Liam into him.

 

“ _Ah,”_ Liam squeaks as he drapes his arms over Zayn’s shoulders. Super-strength was a real turn-on.

 

 _“You’ve just reminded me why I’ve always known you’re favourite colours pink.”_ Zayn kisses his nose as Liam squints at him, bumping their noses together while Zayn’s rosy smell trickles down into him like a waterfall, lapping up sweet on his tongue.

 

He teases his lips over Zayn’s, pulling back when Zayn tries to kiss him, just out of reach, making his grip on Liam tighten because it drives him insane when Liam teases him.

 

“... cause my entire life, I’ve always been blushing whenever you look at me like that?”

 

Zayn shakes his head, kissing Liam’s lips quickly and pulling back with a smug smile when he finally catches it. Liam snorts with his chin tucked in again, slowly licking the taste off his bottom lip as Zayn watches his tongue slip over his full lip with his mouth perching open a little now.

 

The electricity between them is _palpable_ and mouth-watering.

 

It reminds him of tasting those daffodils Lux stuffed into his mouth and now Liam changes his mind about putting off bedroom activities with the way Zayn is looking at him like he wants to slurp him up.

 

Maybe he does want to give him that back rub now. Cause he needs to taste him again _now_ cause he’s getting a little hornie-- _hungrier---_ himself _._

 

Back rubs lead to his tongue attached to Zayn’s lower back and wrestling over who gets on top, which turns into naked wrestling which Liam loses at 100% of the time that he doesn’t mind losing at this time when he ends up In almost every position he can be fucked without actually being fucked. On Liam’s back, on his side. On Zayn’s back. On his _face_.

 

His skin is practically _itching_ for how _full_ circle it’ll finally all come when his sight is fixed.

 

 _“How’d you know my favourite colour was pink?”_ His own hand slides into the back of Zayn’s hair, massaging his scalp as he fuels his growing semi between them.

 

 _“Every time I saw you, you were wearing pink so I figured that was your favourite colour.”_ Zayn further explains, trailing down Liam’s thighs to dancing his fingers over each side of his hips, moving Liam against his middle while Liam’s fingers prod the hairs at back of his neck absently.

 

His head pulls back as he looks at Zayn with confused amusement, baffled by such a strange thing to say.

 

He doesn’t think he’s ever owned anything pink in his life aside from his glasses.

 

“Okay, I don’t know who’s memory you’re speaking of but now I _really_ know you’ve never seen me before as I literally have zero pink clothes.” Liam laughs jokingly but Zayn’s eyes dim suddenly, a pained micro expression flashing across his face for a second as he lets go of Liam’s legs, pulling away from Liam a little as he looks to the side so Liam’s arms fall off the sides on his shoulder blades, falling down in between them like a building collapsing on itself as the soft moment suddenly feels sour. And Liam instantly regrets saying that to him.

 

“I didn’t… mean when I see you in _person_.” Zayn lets an empty laugh escape his lips for a moment, but the amusement in his tone doesn’t reach his eyes as he lets go of Liam completely now, leaning his arms behind him on the bed and looking out towards the window with his gaze far away.

 

“You were always wearing the sunset in my dreams. Even in the dark. So I always knew your favourite colour before you did. Cause you couldn’t see it from your blindness. Couldn’t even see that you were blossoming roses and flowers and making everything look pink.”

 

Zayn elaborates on what “wearing pink” means.

 

He’s never told Liam why he said his favourite colour was pink that day. And now Liam feels like a dick for making Zayn close himself off after saying something stupid when Zayn just shared something personal with him.

 

He rarely ever does share _those_ kinds of things he thinks about. Like his dreams.

 

Of course, now Liam knows Zayn just didn’t want him to know about all this fucked up shit so he still keeps Liam out of the loop of it all.

 

Even though he keeps it casual in the tone of his voice, his body language always speaks for him.

 

He’s visibly pulled back away from Liam now and turned to the side and Liam is beginning to feel the achingly familiar nostalgia of Zayn being really far away from him again despite being right here in front of him and he _hates_ this feeling. He hates being so far away from him when he _shouldn’t_ be.

 

“You know…” Zayn starts absently before Liam can apologise for joking about Zayn’s sight.

 

“I never told you about the curse because I didn’t want you to feel like I never really looked at you or that I hate looking at you, because that’s not true. You’d always be my favourite thing to look at regardless of my vanity. I knew if you knew the truth, it’d hurt you to know I… can’t see your face.”

 

Okay so honesty hour is still going just as _strong_ as before.

 

That might be the most painfully fucked up confession yet for Liam. Although he already guessed that, at least he really knows now.

 

Zayn can never truly see anyone else’s face still to this day.

 

Maybe he can see Liam’s nose or his lips or his birthmark and every part of Liam individually but putting it all together to really _see_ Liam in full is impossible for him to ever do.

 

He can see Liam. He’s always seen Liam. But… he can’t see his face.

 

Liam thinks if he printed off a headshot of himself with 10 other strangers, maybe Zayn would be able to recognise his features individually and point him out but his entire face together would just look like a stranger to Zayn.

 

Even though Lux didn’t answer directly and he just loves lying to Liam’s face, it’s obvious that Zayn’s never _seen_ Liam’s face before just based off the fact alone that he doesn’t see that Liam looks totally different than he did before he bit him. Even Louis knew that Zayn would never see him the same way Louis did, one way or another.

 

Narcissus was cursed to never see anyone’s face but his own. He managed to get around being stuck lusting in the marsh with his tricky loopholes but… Zayn still can’t see anyone’s _face_ but Nars’.

 

Lux’s face.

 

Maybe seeing through Lux’s eyes _now_ has been a loophole around it but, that doesn’t change Zayn’s reality.

 

Inside, Liam dims now at the insensitivity of all those jokes Zayn’s laughed off his entire life about seeming to be in love with his reflection he was always obsessively checking out.

 

His vanity is _not_ funny.

 

No matter how miniscule that seems, nothing in Zayn’s life is miniscule to him. Because those miniscule things are his entire life.

 

“But… I’m inevitably gonna make you feel I hate looking at you anyways.” Zayn snorts to himself, shaking his head as he stares out of their window at the raging hell surrounding them outside of their room.

 

“You know so much about that stupid asshole now so, it’s in your subconscious that I’m gonna leave you again because I never look at you. And it’s in your subconscious that I hate _you_ because I’m looking at myself despite anything I could ever say or do to the contrary. So I’ve already cursed you by even making you aware of my own. And I can’t do anything to ever change that but hope you forget everything you know about me and Lux when this is over.”

 

He’s talking about what Liam said when he exploded with Harry.

 

They haven’t actually talked about that night - or anything else besides from today - and it’s a really touchy subject because Liam said some really fucked up things that he’s been suppressing for years.

 

Sure, he was talking about his dad but… he was also talking about Zayn too. The parallels were too identical.

 

When Zayn left Liam the day he came here, he had no intention on ever seeing Liam again and that… yeah that still kills him partially because it reminded Liam of his dad. Like a familiar dagger to his heart that turned into a butcher knife.

 

The only reason they even let Liam stay is _because_ of his dad.

 

As for the impulsive _‘I hate him,’_ ... Liam can’t say he wasn’t talking about Zayn in that moment either after everything he saw and got attacked by reminders of why he _never_ thought Zayn would want him like that. All the people he associated with.

 

You could ask _‘How the fuck can Liam hate Zayn?’_

 

But Liam doesn’t really hate _Zayn_. He doesn’t even really hate his dad.

 

He just hates what he _did_ to Liam, for _years_ and he’s always wanted to just ask… _why?_

 

_Why did he do it?_

 

But he couldn’t. He could never ask his dad why he left him and he couldn’t ask Zayn why he went out with all those people.

 

Those people that treated Liam like _garbage._

 

Liam couldn’t even ask _himself_ why he cared so much without admitting that it also bothered him because he had very strong feelings for Zayn that he tried to ignore. He could never own up to his sexuality because if he admitted that he wasn’t exactly straight, then his feelings for Zayn weren’t exactly platonic. And if he admitted that he wanted Zayn to be with _him_ instead of with everyone else, then… he’d have to accept that Zayn would never reciprocate that. Cause in Liam’s mind, Zayn wanted _them._ Not Liam.

 

There’s no rejection if you act like you haven’t caught feelings right?

 

Wrong.

 

Every time Zayn was with another boy, to Liam, _that_ was his rejection.

 

After seeing everyone he’s been with, Liam was just brutally reminded of Zayn’s bad reputation of being heartless and not caring about anyone but himself. That reputation was rightfully earned. People didn’t say that Zayn and his friends hated everyone for no reason. Especially Zayn.

 

Like Lux said, people like Zayn come off as cold-hearted and mean. He’d unapologetically hook-up with your boyfriend right in your _face_ if he felt like it and it wasn’t to spite anyone. It was just simply because he didn’t give a fuck. Sophia wasn’t feeling threatened by Zayn for nothing. He risked Liam possibly losing his virginity too early, which Liam realised is why she didn’t care that they were hooking up after that night.

 

But sometimes, Zayn was even cold towards Liam when he was angry.

 

When they weren’t together, Zayn had a persistent pattern of sleeping with people who were either 1) in relationships or 2) abusive towards Liam. There was no in between. Whether or not that’s a reflection of Zayn as a horrible person to do something like that intentionally… Liam tried not to think about either.

 

Actually, Liam knows it was intentionally _just_ to spite _him_ sometimes. It was like a fucked up defence mechanism Zayn had. Even when they were younger, sometimes, they’d be in some kind of fight - whether Liam knows about it or not - and Zayn would make it a point to hang out with Louis or Perrie or anyone that notoriously hated _Liam_ and he’d distance himself from Liam for a while. Then, high school came along and sex got thrown into it.

 

Kind of like when Liam broke Zayn’s heart at that stupid party and he threw himself at Eggsy in response. Except that time, it actually got _him_ killed instead of Liam.

 

Zayn’s wrath was loud and scary but his _envy_ was like it’s partner in crime when it wove itself into it so he became silent and deadly. His jealousy and hate were dangerous on their own. Together… it turned him into the type of thunderstorm that sneaks up on you when you least expect it too and sucker punch you in the face so the fact that those demons became masters of hellfire reflects just how intimidating he is.

 

Even though that means that Lux’s sister and brother, the speedy twins Envidia and Ira, (that won’t be _thrilled_ to see Zayn) are probably his most dangerous demons in hell right now, Lux seemingly got a little bit of that from his personality too. Like when Liam was annoying the shit out of him and he made it a point to let Liam know he was going after Louis instead then. Of course, he ended up _eating_ him but still. The point still stands.

 

Liam shakes his head a little, pulling at Zayn’s knees.

 

“Z, I don’t _care_ about that stuff.”

 

He did.  

 

“It doesn’t matter.”

 

It does.

 

Zayn finally looks at him again with anger in his eyes.

 

“ _Yes it DOES._ If you want to lie to me to make me feel better, _don’t._ And don’t lie to _yourself.”_ He says sharply, sitting back up now with his hands balled up on his knees.

 

“It _does_ matter because it _hurt you._ ” Zayn’s hard face breaks a little as he shakes his head once at the space between them.

 

“I treated you like _shit_ constantly _…_ and _I_ hurt you. I _hate_ what I did to you. EVERYTHING I’ve done to you. I always fuck YOU over and look where the fuck we are now! We can’t even leave this fucking house! It doesn’t matter how much I ever try to make-up for everyone that _kills you_ because I did it the most and I can’t take any of it back. Of course you didn’t think I fucking cared about you and now that’s all you will ever _see_ when we’re together and now you’ll never think I can see you. Of course you _hated me_ for it. I hate myself the most for it--”

 

“Zayn I WASN’T talking about you that night.” Liam stops him.

 

He keeps his emotion dead inside for a reason. Having panic attacks like that is terrifying. But that was a mixture of Zayn’s past in his eyes combatting against the reality of seeing Geoff again. It was just too much to handle at once.

 

“I mean… okay, I was kind of talking about you _,”_ Liam admits as he rolls his eyes.

 

“And maybe I pretend not to care or not acknowledge that I care so the feeling just stays… _dormant_ inside.” He uses that word to describe it instead of dead.

 

Admitting that seeing Zayn with all those guys back at home killed him everyday will just make Zayn feel worst. He’d _kind of_ mentioned something about his best friend maybe “killing him” sometimes in a figurative way when he… “hung out” with his enemies to Sophia and she turned that against them and threw it in Zayn’s face so he’s gonna lay off using terms related to death from now on.

 

Because Zayn beats up anyone that hurts Liam and hates them with a contradictory passion.

 

As contradictory as a narcissist with no identity that hates his reflection.

 

Zayn hates everyone that makes Liam feel dead inside and in his mind… that’s _himself_ . There’s no one Zayn beats up more than him _._ And there’s evidently no one he hates more either.

 

Liam doesn’t want to add to that anymore than he already is.

 

Besides, Zayn’s giving himself a little too much credit here. Most of Liam’s demons are from his dad. That guy was the entire reason Liam had asthma and why he could never even _look_ at himself. Not that his dad completely ignored him… that was a exaggeration but, he made Liam _feel_ like he wasn’t there and he always yelled at him when he made too much noise so he’d make himself even more invisible and Liam knows _Zayn_ obviously cares about him in spite of whatever he’s done in the past. He can’t say that about his dad.

 

“Zayn, you’re not the source of my problems. I’m not _blind_ to who you are, I know you’re not perfect or pure.” Liam tells him as he glowers.

 

He’s only human. Sometimes, you hurt the people you love and Zayn made a lot of mistakes growing up. Liam would never hate him for his flaws or see that as all that he is even though Zayn sees his flaws as everything he is, that’s not what Liam sees when he looks at Zayn.

 

He sees the same heart-breakingly beautiful human being he’s seen his whole life and he’s in love with every part of him.

 

“That _panicked_ emotional meltdown was mostly my fear of seeing _him_ again. I was suppressing it and projecting it all on _you_.”

 

“Because that’s your _truth_ Liam!” Zayn adds for him, “I _never_ wanted you to be aware of such… _disgusting,_ horrible attributes about me and I don’t want you to see that prick ever again and go away with him or associate me with him but you DO because I made you feel like how he did because of my _stupid_ vanity and that’s the fucking truth.”

 

He pauses for a moment, looking down into his lap as his fingers pick over each other, resting his hands over Liam’s still sitting in his lap. His angry face pinches again as he closes his eyes.

 

“I’ve _lied_ to you by withholding the truth and keeping you out of my whole life because I just didn’t want you to _see_ me in that way, as this… massively fucked up person who’s so empty, I might as well be _dead_ .” He says finally and Liam doesn’t think Zayn could’ve taken more exact words out of his own mind, because Liam always felt the _exact_ same way about sharing his own problem with Zayn. The dissociating… or projecting or whatever anyone wants to call it.

 

That sometimes uncontrollable feeling of being dead inside.

 

“But…I’m not dead.” He snorts now, shaking his head at Liam. “Even with a broken neck and a bleeding heart and an electrocuted rib cage, I’m _never_ dead. Because he likes me so much, he decided I’m never gonna die now matter what happens to me.”

 

The words hang there for only a moment. Liam can’t comfort him there cause that’s his harsh reality.

 

“I didn’t want you to know about my curse or my demons or my fucked up past and the more you know at this point, the worse everything gets for us. You can’t look at someone the same way or see them in the same light when you know too much about them. It’s one thing to even have to deal with the fact that you see me _fucking_ someone else every time I get too close to you. That’s a reflection of how you feel, even if you refuse to admit that. You subconscious does for you. I didn’t intend to make you feel like I didn’t… _care_ about you. I get angry over stupid shit and do stupid shit without thinking rationally. And I hate myself for even putting you through that for _years_ . If you knew _actual_ details about why I was the “cocksucker” of Manningtree, you’d be even more _disgusted_ by me and I _just-_.” His face breaks as he’s looking at his hands.

 

“I just regret everything I’ve ever done to you. I don’t want you to _see_ that… it’s _ugly_.”

 

Liam winces a little, flashing back to the memory of the “quid pro quo” he exchanged with Tyler at the game.

 

The fact that that actually had _nothing_ to do with Liam and _everything_ to do with just how Zayn _personally_ sees himself just goes to show Liam how deep the curse truly runs.

 

More than skin deep.

 

It has nothing to do with trying to hurt Liam. He was hurting _himself._

 

Physical or mentally, he’s always done that. Narcissus did that for 1,000 years, tearing apart every aspect of who he was, piercing his skin and his heart to get rid if his demons in painful acts of self-inflicted injuries until he was immortal. And Zayn has every single memory of that buried in his body somewhere.

 

Liam understands why Zayn doesn’t like to share personal stuff. Cause it’s an ugly truth. But… it’s good to get it all out. Release some of the emotional side of pain instead of bottling it up inside.

 

“Okay.” Liam nods softly. “First of all, I will never be disgusted by you.”

 

Zayn opens his eyes slowly into his lap but Liam lifts his head back up. He’s not gonna force Zayn to look at him but he doesn’t want him to look at the ground.

 

“How can I ever judge you for what you’ve been going through inside, as if you’re not a _person?”_ He asks when Zayn holds his hand against his cheek. His eyes come back up as he looks at Liam in the eye again finally.

 

Liam supposes the good thing about Zayn in his eyes is that he sees someone that looks like beautiful poetry that could’ve flew right out of the chorus of his favourite song.

 

No, he’s not as flawless as he looks on the outside but Liam can see that too, sitting there quietly. Colourlessly behind the brown of his eyes and sticking out of his chest and it’s not disgusting. It’s…. his reflection. Who he truly is inside. And as Zayn looks at him, he can see Liam’s truth too.

 

“I’m not disgusted by what I see. I’m in _love._ And I wish you’d be too.”

 

It’s painful to acknowledge the truth. Even more painful to face it without wanting to look away. But hiding from it or detaching from things doesn’t change them. Destroying them doesn’t change anything either, it just adds to the damage.

 

So Zayn looks at Liam and listens instead of turning away and hiding what’s in his eyes.

 

“I told you I fell in love with you the first time I saw you.” Zayn snorts. “There’s a shiny glimmer in your eyes that blinded me. I think it still does. So… I’ve _never_ hated looking at you. Not once in my life, obviously. That’s fucking impossible. And now I know, that bright light in your eyes is _your soul,_ not my reflection in your glasses. So of course I’m in love with what I see Liam. That’s _you_ . It’s like looking at sunlight. Maybe it’s blinding but it’s soft and beautiful and it’s _you_. I’m always gonna be in love with what I see.”

 

Liam sort of already figured that out as well today when he realised what’s been blinding _him_ in his eyes all his life which is… frustrating.

 

If it’s blinded Liam then, of course, it’s blinded Zayn too.

 

He’s not really sure what that looks like to _Zayn_ since he’s not sure how Zayn’s sight works. Cause even in seeing what Zayn sees from his point of view through clairvoyance, Liam still sees everything how he would normally, cause he’s not cursed to only see one face.

 

But Zayn still saw a shiny glimmer in Liam somehow. Although… Liam truly can’t remember the first time they met, but Zayn claims he does and the way he describes it really doesn’t sound like that memory of being blinded by light is something he actually remembers from _this_ life.

 

Liam doesn’t think Zayn really remembers when they met 17 years ago either.

 

Only because now that he knows Zayn’s memories surpass his by at least 1,000 years, he’s thinking Zayn’s vision of this “shiny glimmer” is his memory of the first time Narcissus seen the stars way before he ever seen his face.

 

Narcissus actually was nearly _blinded_ by the sun so, it makes perfect sense if that’s how Zayn remembers seeing something he fell in love with that he decided was “Liam”.

 

“I understand why you don’t want me to know about that stuff. But that’s all in our _past_.” Liam continues.

 

“What we’ve done in our past doesn’t define who we are or change how we feel about each other.”

 

Zayn cracks a small smile when Liam nods his head down. He nods with him once, holding his lips in.

 

“Every once in awhile, sure we break down and small parts of us might die a little. And it hurts. A _lot._ And maybe dying feels like the answer to getting away from pain for good.” Liam shrugs to the side, making sure he doesn’t sugarcoat anything now.

 

“But we don’t break _apart._ And our hearts are still beating somehow through everything and we still have a long way to go.”

 

 _‘You know he’s talking about me, right babe?’_ Lux whispers inside, reminding Zayn he’s still there after he forgets briefly when Lux has been unusually quiet for the last almost hour.

 

_‘You should know that he’s talking about me cause your heart isn’t beating without me. You know, just in case you forget I exist again since you’re not looking at me.’_

 

Zayn’s vein pulses at his neck as he keeps his annoyance with Lux below the surface of his face, continuing to listen to Liam dropping his all-seeing knowledge while ignoring Lux.

 

“We’re not letting the past defeat us or get overwhelmed with the truth. No, we haven’t conquered all our demons yet but I can see yours and you know mine and we can accept that they’re there and work towards growth instead of _rejecting_ whatever lesson the universe is trying to shove down our throats.”

 

Liam gets a little passive aggressive in his tone there.

 

Zayn narrow his eyes at Liam as his head tilts sideways a little with a dark glint in his eye surfacing when he alludes to Lux again, dancing very close to a dangerous landmine that is his explosive demon.

 

Liam decides now is not the time to bring up his feelings about Lux and how he thinks getting rid of him is a really bad idea that will be more detrimental to Zayn than helpful. Considering how alarmed it made Lux when he sprang it on him, he knows Zayn will not be happy about what he thinks either so, he keeps him out of it for now.

 

“And we’re not cursed to keep going in infinity circles.” He moves along.

 

“You can’t learn anything going in circles and we’re still learning new things about all this. About each other. It’s more like… a spiral. We keep coming back to this stuff and seeing _deeper_ truths in each other and our lives so we can learn from it and keep growing into new, more aware people. I think we decide if this spiral is going downwards or up. So we’re gonna keep our chins up like you always tell me. Yeah?”

 

His hands move up to Zayn’s waist, pulling him closer.

 

 _“Yeah?”_ He repeats, coaxing Zayn to respond.

 

Unbeknownst to Liam, Zayn has been _trying_ to listen to everything he’s saying but inside his body, there’s a war going on in full swing. His reflection DISTRACTING him, like always.

 

 _‘Are you gonna tell him now or what? At LEAST let me take us to Xhane!’_ Lux barks at him.

 

_‘The longer we SIT HERE, the more time we’re WASTING. She can’t make everyone forget Liam if word spreads too far!’_

 

_‘Do you ever just SHUT UP?!? The only thing wasting my fucking time is YOU.’_

 

 _‘Okay I fucking get it, burning down the park was stupid so let’s just sit here a mope forever. I’ll remember that when we’re all sucked into a black hole and stuck getting tortured in fucking Cocytus!’_ Lux yells at him.

 

“Babe.”

 

The hiss in his head cuts off as Liam’s voice brings him out of his head when he blinks.

 

“Can’t have a conversation alone.”

 

Zayn sighs as he nods again with tension still layered all over his body, rubbing over his eyes.

 

“I am and me are always in conversation so it’s really not that hard.” He snorts to himself, shaking his head as he looks at Liam again.

 

Liam’s brows raise a little in the funny way he says Lux’s name, like a play on words.

 

“I’ll be honest with you. In a perfect world, everything you just said really would give me hope that I can live with a curse sitting in my chest,” He gestures to his heart, addressing what Liam was getting at about living with Lux there in his heart.

 

“But I don’t have a lot of hope and faith in… really anything but you anymore. Not in him. Or in me.”

 

Now that Liam knows everything, none of his usually poetic play on words are even metaphorical anymore. While Liam still has most of his virtues, Zayn doesn’t have any in his body. His hope and faith were literally purged from his body with his demons. Not even Lux has it. It’s with his twin and who even _knows_ where she is.

 

“I don’t even own a human heart anymore. It’s been dissected into little pieces and sliced through more times than I can count. Because it’s been cut into in _anger_ . Literally. And there’s nothing beautiful about that. _Nothing_ about Zay-- I mean _Narcissus,_ is beautiful.”

 

When he talks in third person now, it gets confusing. Because they’ve both always done that with each sometimes jokingly.

 

_‘Is Liam Payne still a virgin?’, ‘Yes, Liam is still a virgin.’_

 

So now, when he says Narcissus instead of “me” or “I”, it makes him saying that name actually sound like he’s referring to himself in third person, and Liam doesn’t like him calling himself Narcissus or saying that name at all.

 

Liam listens to him go on after his brief slip up.

 

“Maybe I’m attractive but… beauty and attraction are highly overrated. Anyone can be those things and it’s attracted nothing to me but the fucking devil. And it’s attracted you to me, which is now putting your entire life in danger.”

 

Liam grimaces a little bit again at the mental image of Narcissus actually _cutting_ through his flesh and carving into chest with a dagger and ripping his angry demon out of his heart.

 

His life was fucking _brutal._

 

The image of a dagger stabbing though a heart or rose is like that painting, _le Coup au Couer -_ The Blow to the Heart. It represents the duality in their opposites. And since Narcissus seemingly took his duality as literal as possible, all his demons became symbols that he ripped out of his spirit.

 

In this life right now, it seems like Zayn’s literal duality is there currently being two hearts in his body. One dying… and one surviving.

 

The rose is beauty, love and vitality - Zayn and his broken, human heart. His source of life.

 

It shows the capacity to live and develop. But the dagger through it - Lux - is supposed to be evil, death and destruction of that heart, piercing right through it.

 

Except with Zayn and Lux, that dagger is doing the opposite to his heart. He’s not evil or trying to kill Zayn. He’s holding their hearts together to stay alive instead of the contrary.

 

So of course, Narcissus - being the poetic genius he was - took that image to heart… literally.

 

Narcissus sacrificing part of his heart to get rid of his wrath is only 1 piece out of the 7 trials of the tragedy that his long and exhausting life was and Liam doesn’t even want to know or _think_ about how he got the rest out.

 

Since Lux is filling that sacrificed part of his heart now, he’s gonna have to do it all over again, slice through it and take out everything he doesn’t want there. Of course, he doesn’t tell Liam gore-filled details about how he’s planning on doing that but now that Liam knows Lux holds his abstinence, he’s probably gonna be doing a lot more… _surgery_ than Narcissus because he’s _keeping_ his abstinence so he can abstain from mirrors this time.

 

He can’t break his curse like that but he sure can carve around it.

 

“I don’t love people enough to have faith in humanity. Especially my own.” Zayn goes on with his own hard truth.

 

“Cause I fuck up a lot and drag people down to hell with me and that’s like… the _worst_ kind of fuck-up someone can be. The kind that fucks over and kills anyone they come into contact with like a goddamn walking _grenade_. Like I’ve done to you. And it makes me question if I really do belong in hell sometimes,”

 

Liam’s frown deepens. He’s… repeating what _Sophia_ said to him, almost verbatim.

 

After Sophia tried to manipulate Liam with her words and thinking about everything Lux said when he lied to Ari about being compelled and manipulated by satanists on the surface… Liam starts to wonder if it was _Sophia_ that compelled him.

 

Even _Lux_ seemed afraid of her for some reason that Liam now realises is because he’s fucking compulsive and her manipulating _him_ would make him easy to overpower and _kill_ with just her words.

 

Lux fled his house and came back home immediately after she _told_ him to leave. And they _were_ being manipulated by a fucking satanist everyday. Liam especially. Obviously Sophia works for that devil who comes to Manningtree for teenaged bodies, who wanted Liam and Zayn to be sacrificed to him. For what? Who the fuck even knows what anyone could _possibly_ want Liam for.

 

But… it failed.

 

And now, they’re both in _hell…_ where she advised them both to go _._ And Liam realises that everything that’s happened since the fire could be a _trap_.

 

Liam is just suddenly reminded that he can’t really trust anything that Zayn’s says. Because… those aren’t his own words and he doesn’t seem to even know that those aren’t his words.

 

Lux said no one could compel Liam if they _tried_ and Liam believes that. Sophia definitely couldn’t. Not even his dreams or hallucinations can trick Liam. He always knows what’s real and what isn’t. That includes if his thoughts and feelings are really his own.

 

Liam listens to is every word very closely now, keeping his eyes focused on the brown in Zayn’s and the grey behind them for any signs of him being stunned or any tears of stressed pain in his eyes. Because being compelled reflects in their eyes.

 

“So, maybe if I’m gone from you for too long, I’ll have to just stop trying to put my soul back together. Restart and find you again. Even though I hate that I keep _leaving you_ and putting you through _hell_ . This keeps tearing us apart but I’m gonna keep trying. _”_

 

He’s drifting back into all the horrible stuff he said when he was crying as he told Liam about his soul being damned and trying to fix it is probably pointless. And Liam fucking hates that because _now_ he knows Zayn was basically saying he can’t stand being away from Liam for too long so if he can’t break the curse and leave, then he’d just kill himself so he’s reborn, even though he couldn’t bring himself to fully form those words. Because that’s the _only_ other possible way he’d ever get out of hell and find Liam if nothing else works.

 

It seems like that was Nars’ _last_ resort. Harry thinks it was an accident but obviously, it’s impossible for anyone but Zayn to know what he was actually doing when he left or why he didn’t tell anyone.

 

“Zayn--”

 

Zayn stops Liam’s from interrupting with his hand balled up.

 

 _“I’m not thinking about what’s gonna happen to me.”_ He says slowly.

 

“I’m the _last_ thing you should be concerned about. I’m never gonna die but you _can_ and I just want--” He cuts off mid-sentence as his throat closes with his eyes.

 

“I just _need_ you to be safely away from _hell_ when this is over, with or without me.” He re-words it now as he clears his throat.

 

And Liam can hear the “good-bye without saying goodbye” in his voice.

 

“I know everyone thinks that I just don’t give a fuck about anything but I do. You’re _everything_ to me. And I’m willing to give up my arms and legs if it means you live _normal_ again. And don’t _tell me_ that me sacrificing anything in my life isn’t right. Because I’ve got enough life to just fucking grow new ones in the next life and I can’t extend immortality over to you or _anyone else_ . I promise you, I’m doing everything I _can_ to come back home but if me living up there again like this is going to get _you_ killed, then we can’t be together.”

 

Liam doesn’t think he means “we,” is just him and Liam. Him and _Lux._

 

 _1 sacrifice - Luxuria’s life._ Liam counts in his head as that one slices through him, making his blood tense up with Zayn’s words.

 

“And if love is going to be the death of _you_ , then I HAVE to sacrifice that too.”

 

_2 sacrifices - their hearts._

 

Zayn paces himself careful as he musters up his words now.

 

“And if I’m cursed to hell, then… _you have to let go of me.”_

 

_Last sacrifice… Zayn._

 

He doesn’t sugar coat his load this time. Liam really can’t hold back his tears now, making his vision blurry.

 

“You want me to let go of my _heart?”_ Liam’s throat clenches up as he chokes out a laugh. Zayn wipes his tears off for him, his own staying completely dry.

 

“No.” He shakes his head. “I want to let go of what’s _breaking_ your heart. Because if you don’t, you’ll die and it will be all my fault. I can’t keep breaking your heart and making you feel like you’re fading away into a void because of _my problems._ This isn’t a life I want you to have. In _hell_ with me. You’ve been perfect and I’m haven’t been shit but hell for you.”

 

_No you haven’t._

 

“Right now, I’m a soulless demon. And because of that now, it’s inside you, slowly eating away at your gut.”

 

Liam can’t say that one isn’t true, unfortunately. But demons aren’t all evil. And his soul is just… a little vacant. In order, he slowly got picked them apart.

 

His eyes.

 

His skin.

 

His heart.

 

His brain.

 

His ribs _._

 

Everything that made him who he was.

 

His _humanity._

 

That inane glint that represents the entire soul that’s been drained of everything behind his eyes.

 

He sold himself, _everything_ he could, for them to be together _._ If anyone has been given hell here, it’s Zayn. Because he gets to feel the aftermath of his past inside him where no one else but him can feel it. But even with the awareness that _someone else_ did this to him, he still somehow blames himself for all their problems. His ego really is going to be the death of him.

 

“I don’t know if that will ever change in this life or the next. I’m probably running out of things to purge for freedom.” He continues.

 

“I’m not gonna lie to you and say I have hope that I’ll be able to change who I am. Because if I’m _him_ , then I’m stuck here in a fucking mirror forever. And you deserve _so much_ _more_ than what I can give you if I fail. As far as I know now, all I have is a million scary monsters inside me and they’re worth a lot so… I’ll be able to keep coming home as long as I’ve got demonic pieces of my soul to sell. But, they might crawl back out of the portal and drag me back here if I don’t close it in time. And I only have one chance to do all that.”

 

“But that’s not right now because you haven’t failed.” Liam persists with the optimism so they stop talking about all the stuff that’s making it physically painful to not cry now.

 

“No. Not right now.” Zayn sighs. “But we’ve got set terms now if the worst case scenario happens, yeah?”

 

Liam still hasn’t agreed to the terms of this agreement yet. He can’t trust Zayn’s word.

 

The terms being, if Zayn can’t break his curse, then him and Liam can’t be together. And if he has to stay trapped here, then Liam has to leave him behind forever.

 

Liam reads his body language since his eyes can’t change like how Lux’s can. Because even if his eyes and words can lie to Liam, Zayn’s _body_ can’t.

 

He starts to pick up little _tiny_ details that hiccup in his body language. It’s almost like a patterned rhythm with each word and this behaviour of Zayn’s reminds Liam of what Ari said about how Nars used to talk with iambic pentameter so you could figure out what he was really saying.

 

Zayn continues to go on with his terms while Liam cautiously listens. Every time Zayn mentions that he _has_ to _stay_ here to “finish” things, his posture straightens, _slightly_ away from Liam as he shoulder blades rotate sideways absently.

 

It’s _very_ subtle and Liam probably wouldn’t even notice if he wasn’t looking paying close attention. But it’s _there_ on his body since his mind might have been tampered with _._

 

And it’s false. Even if thoughts are lying to him, his body isn’t.

 

Zayn doesn’t have straight posture. _At all._

 

When he turns away from Liam with his shoulders instead of his eyes, it’s because he _wants_ to avoid eye contact, but he can’t look away like he wants to right now. And it tells Liam something clear.

 

Zayn _doesn’t_ have to stay here. Someone doesn’t want Zayn to _leave here._

 

The question of _who_ is up in Liam’s mind now that’s it’s not Sophia or demons that are against Zayn.

 

It’s his friends he left here. Who _else_ is known to compel Lux and wants Zayn to stay here longer?

 

Now Liam thinks he’s pretty good at the whole power of the mind thing Lux was teaching him about. He can’t read Zayn’s mind but, their subconsciousness can still communicate.

 

Subliminal messages are hard to catch to the naked eye but Liam’s eyes can catch it all now that he’s more aware. And the demon inside him helps with it too. He can do everything any demon can do. All of Lux’s “sions” like compulsion and persuasion and the rest he’s still figuring out how to use.

 

He thinks he knows how to use persuasion pretty easily. Lux said his was pretty strong. And obviously, his compulsion is too although that one really took a toll on Liam’s tongue. But it’s all right there on his tongue, waiting for him to go ahead and pick every part of Zayn’s mind to persuade him reveal the _truth._ Because if Zayn’s will is being overpowered inside him, then Liam can reveal what he really wants with a suggestion and persuade him into telling him the truth.

 

Compulsion… will _force_ Liam’s will. Even if Liam doesn’t want to tamper with Zayn’s mind and make him reveal something he actually doesn’t want Liam to know, if someone else has already changed what Zayn actually wants, then Liam kind of has an obligation to force it out right now. He’s not gonna get answers any other way. Zayn is keeping a _lot_ of secrets right now and Liam just can’t trust it.

 

So he goes on and starts with a suggestion. He can builds towards persuasion and maybe compulsion if he needs too but, suggestion is really easy so he starts with a basic one anyone can do, like how magicians do.

 

“Can we not include dreams in these terms?” He suggests lightly.

 

Zayn’s dreams are a good place to start since that’s his past so the best answers have gotta come from the origin.

 

Zayn laughs with his brow scrunching up as he thinks about it.

 

“Dreams?” He repeats. Liam nods.

 

“Yeah. I’ve been daydreaming about _you_ my whole life, you’ve been dreaming about _me_. It doesn’t cost anything to dream about each other, right?”

 

Zayn takes a moment to take that into real consideration, as if Liam is joking before he decides he agrees.

 

“Okay.” He nods, and just like that, it worked, unknowingly opening up a whole world or more suggestions.

 

Now Liam really does feel like a demon, building him up with small hints until he makes a final suggestion that’s too hard for whoever he’s tempting to refuse after they’ve been swayed one way, like talking in more detail about his dreams.

 

“Your my dream guy so, if nothing else, we’ll always see each other in our dreams.” Zayn smiles.

 

“Do you really… see _me_ in your dreams or just light that reminds you of me?” He asks with genuine curiosity.

 

They can’t all be nightmares.

 

Zayn smiles to the side.

 

“Sometimes I see you. You always show up wearing pink. Sometimes I _can’t_ see you but I still know when you’re there with me.”

 

“How?”

 

Zayn leans back as he looks Liam in the eye for a moment, biting his lip in as he frowns, not knowing how to answer.

 

Dreams are usually designed in ways so that you _can’t_ describe them to anyone anyways but… Zayn’s are different than the average person’s.

 

Suddenly, Liam changes his mind about pushing answers out of Zayn through his past. It just feels wrong to _make_ him talk about his past and his nightmares. Even before all this happened, he didn’t like talking about it anyways on his own as it is.

 

“You don’t _have_ to tell me about it actually.” Liam backtracks, like he always does, to go about it a different route since Zayn always disappears whenever he pushes too much.

 

He knows Zayn doesn’t do that to hurt him or anyone else on purpose, check out on everyone for while. It’s just a bad habit he has of his own to not tell anyone when something’s wrong or why he’s upset or communicate how he really feels at all.

 

It’s the main reason why the whole “Where’s Zayn??” thing was so normalised when Lux first got here. He usually disappeared for only a few days though so, 3 weeks was only abnormal solely because that was the longest he’s ever been gone from civilisation.

 

But his behaviour wasn’t _completely_ out of the blue.  

 

Liam’s never asked Zayn where does he go when he goes quiet, because it’s usually a _dark_ place. He always thought Zayn was mad at him whenever he randomly distanced himself from everything and stopped talking to him for a few days, as he usually _was_. But they’ve already talked about that now and they’re past it now. He’d always come back and everything would be okay.

 

It’s clearly the reason why Lux does it too.

 

Thinking about it now makes him think about what Louis said about why Zayn keeps Liam out.

 

_“He keeps secrets from you cause he doesn't want you to see how ugly he is inside.”_

 

He really needs to stop listening to Louis as he rolls his eyes at that tasteless remark.

 

Zayn has lots of scary secrets and Liam understands if he doesn’t want to share all of them.

 

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to--”

 

“No, Liam..” Zayn shakes his head quickly.

 

“It’s not that I don’t _want_ to. I just… don’t know _how_ to explain anything I see to you in a way that makes any sense….”

 

“Seriously? What has made sense?” Liam deadpans. Zayn nods towards the ground with his brows frowning.

 

“Good point.” He sighs.

 

“I don’t want to keep you out of my entire life or turn away from you but I just… can’t _help it_ . My life is too fucked up for me to ever truly want to share any of it with you. If things were… _different_ , I’d share _everything_ with you. But the more I share with you, the more I fuck you up. I turned you into a DEMON. How fucked up is that? There’s no _ceiling_ to the shit. The less you know the fucking _better._ ” He says honestly as he looks Liam in the eye again.

 

Liam can tell he’s forcing himself to look at him and getting frustrated with the eye contact but making himself look anyways and it honestly makes him so _sad_ to see him struggling with it like this right now as he tries to talk to Liam about it.

 

“I can see you… _mostly_ . I can see every part of you. That includes every part of your _face._ Just not… altogether on your face.” He says carefully as he looks over Liam’s face, who holds his lips in when Zayn’s eyes land there. After a beat, he smiles slyly again, looking back up at Liam.

 

“I could point out your _luscious_ lips from a crowd of a _million_ Liam.”

 

Liam stops his hands from assaulting his tummy as he laughs, holding his hands tightly now.

 

“I’m not like, _blind_.” He continues. “It’s just like seeing through a glass tunnel or something when I look people in the eye.”

 

For some reason, Liam gets what he means about seeing Liam without seeing his face. But he really can’t _picture_ it, what it looks like seeing through glass and still unable to see someone’s face. Zayn squints one eye close at Liam narrowing the other as Liam sways from side to side before holding up 4 fingers in front of his nose.

 

“How many fingers?” He wiggles them over his nose for a moment before wiggling the his other hand in front Zayn’s eyes.

 

“11.”

 

They both laugh then for a while, Zayn miscounting each finger with kisses, somehow going from 11 to 8 then back up to 10 then down to zero by the time he counts all 4 fingers with his lips.

 

“Trying to describe it is like trying to describe how I see a _colour_.” He sighs now with Liam’s hands squishing his cheeks together, back and forth.

 

“It won’t ever make sense to anyone else because I can’t get you to understand what everything looks like to me. But in my dreams, I can see you _completely_. I can’t see myself at all in my dreams.”

 

Liam supposes those are memories from _before_ he ever saw himself.

 

Harry’s description of what Liam looks like outside of his body was very strange.

 

He told Liam that when he watches him leave his body, he looks exactly the same but just transparent because his “energy” holds his structure for a few hours. But the longer he stays outside, the more his form gradually loses his shape so he doesn’t quite look like his body anymore but more like, _“formless energy… like a wreath of spiritual polymorphism. It’s wicked!”_ \- You know, very _Harry_ words. He showed Liam a diagram of something similar to what it’s like:

 

 

 _“Or something like this… you're not, like shaped like this or a white void, obviously. You’ve got your own aura, like a fingerprint. I mean, everyone looks like this when I’m high but still.”_ Harry added when Liam looked at him, dead faced.

 

But, maybe Harry was onto something.

 

Now Liam isn’t sure if he’s talking about actually seeing a pink _star_ or actually seeing Liam in pink but, he listens to him describing the way he dreams intently.

 

“When I was little, I used to have these strange visions of you. I mean, you were way older than me but I knew it was you. And I’d follow after you everywhere you went, trying to reach for you but you were always too far away from me. Sometimes… it just feels like I’m tripping on acid.” He scrunches up his nose a little in distaste.

 

“Like...I’m eating this weird food and it tastes like candy but it makes me see crazy shit. Like walking sunsets and… fairies and shit. Birds start talking to me, speaking this like… _alien_ language I don’t understand, annoying me… I dunno, it’s a dream so, nothing makes sense.”

 

“Acid.” Liam nods, making Zayn laugh. Even in his dreams, he’s fucking high. Not very shocking.

 

“Anyways,” He goes on.

 

“The only thing I can see clearly is you. But you couldn’t see me at all, so I figured it was because _you_ were blind… which you were back then. I’d try to touch you and my fingers would go straight through your skin like water. I always thought it was this extensively annoying metaphor for us. You being this unobtainable dreamy guy who can’t see me pining after you that I’ve always wanted but never could have. _”_ He snorts as his hand comes up to his face when Liam squishes his lip, moving his thumb over Liam’s tattooed wrist.

 

“I can touch you, see?” Liam teases, opening and closing Zayn’s mouth like a puppet for a moment before he finally lets go, seeing him looking down at Liam’s moon, deep in thought as he traces Liam's wrist, still returning the affection despite being elsewhere inside.

 

“Where _were_ we in this… ‘vision’?” Liam asks slowly.

 

Zayn shrugs a bit.

 

“No idea.” He sighs, blinking down. “I’d be watching the sunset and then all of the sudden, I eat some candy and I’d see you, blazing in my eyes and practically blinding me. So I couldn’t see where I was. All I could see was you. You never knew I was watching you. So I definitely seen you first.”

 

Liam realises he’s _is_ talking about the first time he met Liam. As a stranger in a _dream_. So that’s why Liam can’t remember for the life of him.

 

That’s Zayn’s dream.

 

A memory of the first time Narcissus seen Adara. He couldn’t touch her.

 

“So… I figured you obviously really liked the colour pink cause you wore it everyday and everything looked pink around you. The ground you walked on, the flowers you passed by, they all turned _pink_ around you. Just like a sunset.”

 

He looks up at Liam now.

 

“You couldn’t see me… you didn’t know I was following you. But every time I’d get close enough to you to actually talk to you, I’d wake up.”

 

They lay there in bed talking about Zayn’s weird dreams for a while, the ones that aren’t scary. None of it makes sense to either of them but… it was kind of funny after awhile of trying to interpret it all.

 

When they’ve lost all track of time, sprawled out on opposites ends of the bed with their bare legs tangling in the middle like always, Liam decides living in a dream together would _suck._

 

It sounds like all they do is just go on blind dates, following each other around without the other knowing they’re there. Obviously this mutual pining thing was carried over from Adara and Narcissus as well.

 

“ _Of course_ we can go out a real date.” Zayn tells him when Liam starts getting pouty over not being able to go out like he wants to.

 

“I’ve been trying to ask you out for about 4 fucking years now so I’m not turning you down. Ever.” He makes clear so Liam doesn’t take this as no.

 

“We just can’t go anywhere right now. Not back to the surface yet. Not me or you.”

 

“ _Why?”_ Liam kicks Zayn’s knee as this stupid insistence on keeping Liam out comes back up again.

 

“You were _kicking me out_ like…” Liam sits up and leans over Zayn to grab his cell phone off the nightstand next to him, glancing at the time.

 

“ _7_ hours ago.” He rolls his eyes now as he looks at Zayn, showing him the real time. Zayn smacks his lips, moving it out of his face.

 

“That was before--”

 

“Before I started _crying_ over something stupid!” Liam finishes for him as he sits up in annoyance.

 

“So this is about _Geoff?_ Because I’m over it! I was just being overly emotional because of everything that was happening at that particular moment Zayn. I was _freaked out_ about not seeing you again more than I was about my dad and it just became… _overwhelming_ . I don’t care about him anymore. He doesn’t even really _want_ me to move in with him, that’s just, _”_ Liam scoffs as he rolls his eyes again downwards.

 

“That’s just his _guilt_ about being a total deadbeat! Mum told me we won’t move if I don’t want to…”

 

Liam’s voice rants in the background as Zayn’s lips button in annoyance when Lux starts talking to him inside, distractingly.

 

 _‘This is why keeping secrets fucks up more than just TELLING THE TRUTH. Here’s the perfect opportunity to tell him NOW!’_ Lux hisses at him, straining to not take over and get them the fuck out of this house as fast as he can.

 

_‘How am I supposed to tell him something like that? He doesn’t have to know.’_

 

 _“Zayn,”_ Liam sighs when he sees Zayn isn’t even listening to him as he stares at him blankly, not even noticing that Liam stopped talking.

 

“I’m not a little kid anymore. I’m not afraid of seeing my dad up there. He can’t _make me_ move in with him.”

 

“Liam, if you go back there, he CAN make you leave with him. He’s your dad! He can do whatever he wants with you and no one will be able to stop him because you're _his_ and you’ll leave with him and we’ll NEVER see each other again!”

 

 _‘What the fuck is wrong with you? Just TELL HIM!’_ Lux tsks.

 

“Of _course_ we will. I’m not leaving the _country Z--_ ”

 

_‘If you don’t, I will--’_

 

“Will you fucking **SHUT UP** FOR ONCE? **!”** Zayn growls to the side through gritted teeth as his eyes flare darker in anger. Liam’s mouth closes immediately, which makes Zayn’s eyes tone back down right after as he softens, looking at Liam’s alarmed expression.

 

“No, not you!” Zayn quickly backtracks as he sits up before holding his head and glaring into space in frustration.

 

This shit drives him INSANE.

 

Lux _never_ stops chiming his unwanted opinions in his head which is why Zayn spends most of the time kissing Liam instead of talking to him which he knows is really fucked up but _everything_ is fucked up so their relationship isn’t getting spared the damage any more than they are.

 

This entire thing is never gonna work with his annoying voice talking to him in the background of everything he does.

 

 _“Bloody FUCKING hell!_ I can’t focus with BOTH OF YOU TALKING TO ME!” Zayn grabs Liam’s phone off the night stand behind him but his hand freezes against his will now before he can look into it.

 

Lux has had enough of sitting around doing _nothing_.

 

Liam watches the strange swirls in his eyes racing each other as Zayn tries to purge Lux into his reflection, making veins bulge at his neck, preventing him from looking into it. The grey completely takes over one whole eye solidly then as only one eye stays brown while the other fades so it looks like he’s got heterochromia.

 

“Whoa…” Liam sits up as he looks between both of his eyes as Lux finally trumps him for dominance, looking at Liam again with mismatched eyes now.

 

“Liam you can’t go home and you can’t RUN ahead of me like that. I have to know where you are at all times.” Lux says firmly… he _thinks_ that’s Lux?

 

The eyes are already hard enough to distinguish on a normal day but they’ve never been like this before and Liam has no idea who’s really talking now.

 

“If you project yourself forward too fast, all your MASS would be left in your body and you would _pass_ the speed of actual light. Being superluminal is _dangerous._ ”

 

Liam frowns a little.

 

Superliminal is speed greater than light. Which is no speed because _nothing_ is faster than light.

 

That has to be Lux talking physics like that.

 

“What do you mean…?”

 

He winces as he looks down, squeezing the brown eye closed and holding his stomach.

 

“Like… when I pass the… speed of _sound_.” He grunts, battling internally with… himself. He paces himself, talking slowly as a ripple moves through his body, making him hiss in pain. He's never actually seen them fight each other in his body like this. Obviously Lux is telling Liam stuff Zayn doesn't want him to know.

 

“It sounds like _thunder…_ cause I’m _lust…_ and I can break the sound barrier here in this realm of Lust.”

 

He looks up at Liam again with half of the brown eye sliced through with grey. Liam just stares at them in silence at such a bizarre moment, watching Lux slowly win the fight and dominant Zayn's body.

 

His limbs aren’t as jerkish and twitchy anymore when he does it compared to before. He’s getting better at possession and settling into having control over his body easier… Liam isn’t sure if that’s a bad thing or not.

 

“If you pass the speed of light _without_ your body, you’d break the light barrier and be in a _quantum realm.”_ Lux continues, seemingly stable now although his eyes aren’t, having a miniature conniption still as the colours glitch, that colour fading in and out.

 

“I don’t know what would happen to you or your body if you ever go that fast. _This_ isn’t indestructible.”

 

His hand moves across Liam’s waist, to indicate he means his body can’t move at light speed with Liam.

 

“Your physical body could possibly disintegrate if you go too fast or get too far _away_ from you for you to ever come back and you’d leave _all of us_ behind here and something fucked up could happen to you that I can’t _help you with--”_

 

 _“Lux, slow down,”_ Liam says gently as he’s starting to get borderline hysterical on him, but he keeps talking over Liam, rapidly.

 

“There’s too many planes that exist between physical worlds that _you_ can get _lost_ in. _”_

 

_“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”_

 

_“IF YOU PASS THE SPEED OF LIGHT, YOU COULD DESTROY YOUR PHYSICAL BODY AND GET STUCK IN THE MIDDLE OF SPACE AND FUCK UP MULTIPLE TIME STREAMS.”_

 

“At the… centre of everything? Like the multiverse?” Liam’s eyes widen as he nods gravely.

 

“The centre of everything is on a _tempus_ where every point in time connects _._ If you get stuck at _any_ point on a tempus, you might not ever be able to come _back_ and you could kill yourself and ALL OF US if you try to come back! Everything rotates around the centre. Light travel especially. It looks like a figure 8, infinity symbol. Everything that exists, every life, rotates around it until they come to the middle and go to the other side of the loop and it just keeps going like that forever. I know you seen it, the place in the middle of everything that looks like a sphere. It looks much closer than it actually is. You can’t just _go there_ whenever you want. That’s called a tempus and _Death_ lives there. That’d be like… breaking into his house. When _you_ run, you migrate _towards it_ because you’re moving faster than light and you won’t be strong enough to break out of its gravitational pull if you get too close to it, like falling into a portal. You’re not supposed to be able to go past the middle to the other side without _dying.”_

 

It’s not exactly time travel. Time only moves in one direction, around that massive infinity loop endlessly. But light moves in _every_ direction so time virtually means nothing in a quantum realm. Liam could see stars dancing all over it like diamonds, obviously light is elusive as fuck.

 

He’s saying Liam could throw his timeline off balance if he transcends light - which _transcends time_ . Which means ending up in and creating/or wiping out… _alternative universes._ That's worst than dying. Going so fast that you actually manage to get back before you leave is like wiping out you own existence... which Liam isn't even gonna try to understand how anything can be that fast.

 

Light travel is much more dangerous than time travel. Just like how speed demons are the most dangerous. Lux told him that speed demons are like cats.

 

 

Liam only just figured out he can even go that fast today. Luckily, he wasn’t really going _that_ fast.

 

Before Zayn… or Lux can finish (Liam really can’t tell who he’s talking to right now), their bedroom door _swings open_.

 

They both look up and Lux automatically pulls Liam into him at the same time Liam does the same thing, grasping each other when they’re startled at first until they realise it’s just a young girl as she closes the door behind her and jumps on the bed, falling into her uncle's lap, making him let go of Liam as he catches her, smelling like fruity perfume with short white hair pulled back in a tiny bun with an embroidered golden headband that has daisies intricately braided into it, big blue eyes, light-caramel toned skin, two pink and gold hoops in her nose.

 

One very teenaged zit at the centre of her forehead.

 

She’s _human._ And _so_ pretty, she reminds Liam of Zayn’s little 13 year old sister, Waliyha if she were a few years older. All Zayn’s sisters have baby bluish-green eyes, just like her.

 

She looks about the same age as them.

 

 _“You are in so much trouble!"_ She whispers. He pushes her waist off as he springs up, panicked.

 

 _“What do you mean? No one’s even here, we ditched them in the woods, how do you know?”_ He asks her quietly with wide eyes as she scoots next to Liam, with her chin tucked into her knees.

 

 _“Not with the police, the Keeper! EVERYONE KNOWS you sent his son to Gluttony, stupid!”_ She hisses at him.

 

_“It’s ALL OVER. Even in GREED. Luke told everyone!”_

 

She begins a very convoluted explanation about some “he said”, “she said” gossip roaming around throughout hell, word travelling all over the place about everything that happened at the park.

 

_Everything._

 

Starting with Luke telling G down in Gluttony and G blabbing to everyone he knows, including his brother Avaritia which means word spread not only to Greed but to the surface too. And to their older brother, _Ace_ , who is presumed to be out somewhere with his friend Abraxas right now after he left earlier, thinking Zayn went out with Liam like how she told him for Lux. And now, the jig is up.

 

Ace is on his way here. _With the keeper._

 

 _“Dad just called us from Brooklyn, that’s how I know.”_ She continues.

 

_“What did he say?”_

 

_“That they’re PISSED, obviously. He told me to warn you to fuck off if you want to stay alive.”_

 

 _“Fuck,”_ He rips through his hair in frustration.

 

Now, they don’t have time to do _anything._ Liam has to leave. He just needs to get him to Xhane without being _seen._

 

His legs bend up now to float behind him as he glides to the door and peeks out. Liam can feel his heart jittering in his chest from the bed.

 

His niece looks over at Liam sideways.

 

“I’m Ant.” She smiles against her knees on the bed with her head tilted.

 

Liam already knew that. Silver hair, just like Lux said.

 

She sounds like an American as well. Sort of. Some of her words sound foreign. Some don’t. He can tell she’s spent more time in New York than she does here.

 

“Hi…” Liam replies slowly, looking between her and Lux at the door before Lux is suddenly pulled up into the air by invisible hands with his legs dangling above the ground even more than usual, a girly giggling sounding in front of him. He rolls his eyes and palms at unseen hands around his waist.

 

 _“Stop fucking with me!”_ He hisses, elbowing the air so he’s released, ripping a cloak off the culprit, a blue eyed girl that can’t be anyone else but Antonia’s identical twin sister, Alivia wearing a black tracksuit. She sticks her tongue out at Lux and snatches her invisible cloak back, wrapping it around her long dark ponytail now so it’s a hijab, which apparently doubles as some kind of invisible cape.

 

 _“You keep playing around with magic like that and I’m telling Xhane to take this thing_ _back.”_ Lux flicks at her scarf before he’s back over to the bed, throwing pants at Liam as he tugs on his own.

 

 _“Get up. Get dressed.”_ He urges as he pulls Liam to his feet and makes him get his jeans back on along with his shoes.

 

His feet lower to the ground now after he’s put on his own shoes.

 

 _“We have to get out of here now. If we go to Xhane’s, no one will know I burned down the park.”_ He whispers as he hops on one leg until it’s on.

 

Ant stands up with her arms crossed over her pink blue tank top.

 

 _“Telling your little girlfriend make everyone forget won’t help you. They’re gonna take one look at that park and demand your HEAD all over again anyways. He wouldn’t be on his way here if you hadn’t burned down the entire fucking park in the first place! You made him go to GLUTTONY for his son on his day off. He wants to MURDER you.”_ She hisses at him.

 

Liam feels his own panic now finally as the impact of what’s actually happening dawns as he sits to put his shoes back on.

 

The wind knows out of him all the suddenly, no longer feeling like a demon who can face anything the universe had in store for him. He felt like a scared little boy again, and he wanted to crawl back into bed and hide under the covers.

 

 _Thee devil_ was going to be here.

 

Possibly, The Morning Star.

 

 _“I told you not to go to the park because I knew Luke was down there.”_ She shrugs.

 

They all keep _whispering_.

 

All at once, the air _chills._ And it freezes everyone, including Liam, just instinctively as they all still like statues.

 

It’s not a _huge_ change but in this steaming house, _any_ drop in the temperature is felt all around, like the heat is all being sucked away towards a black hole in the distance.

 

Nobody moves for a few _very_ tense seconds.

 

Beyond the closed bedroom door that leads to the living room, a massive _thump_ hits the ground, shaking the walls and Liam _knows_ someone just came home through the marsh.

 

Two grown voices speaking Latin sound through the walls, echoing something _ancient_ in the rasps of their throats as they talk to each other. They aren’t _bodiless_ that’s for sure if they just came through the marsh.

 

When Liam looks at Lux in front of him with his breath stilled, his finger holds over his lips, indicating for Liam to be _quiet._

 

When the voices outside disappear down the hall, Lux talks, out loud now instead of whispering as he looks at Ant and Alivia now.

 

“You can’t do anything I ever ask you to.” He yells at the twins although his face doesn’t match his voice.

 

He’s gesturing to Liam to stand up and Liam does so silently, getting off the bed along with Ant. He doesn’t know what’s happening or why it’s suddenly not as hot anymore but he knows something is _wrong._

 

“You can forget sneaking out to that party tonight that’s for damn sure.” Lux looks at Liam when he says that, biting his lips with a worried expression. Liam squints in utter confusion.

 

_‘W h a t ?’_

 

 _‘I am bic pentameter.’_ Lux mouths back as he back away on his feet. It’s so strange to see him walking now even though he looked like he was walking on Earth. But seeing him do it now just looks unnatural.

 

Liam nods, mouthing “oh”

 

As he tries to replay Lux’s 5 accentuated syllables, he actually instantly hears what he actually said. There is no party.

 

_Sneaking out tonight._

 

**_“LUXURIA!”_ **

 

His name booms through the walls from deep in the slowly chilling house, growing colder and _colder._ The relief from the heat doesn’t feel good. It feels _insidious_. Liam finds the chill a little familiar.

 

Lux jumps as he winces.

 

“ALRIGHT, _shit.”_ He yells back as he turns towards the door, looking back at the twins once.

 

 _‘Get him O U T!’_ It’s the last thing he mouths before he fists at the air with an angry _‘Fuck!’_ as he speeds walks through the living room and disappears down the hall.

 

Liam's paranoia grows when he disappears. Maybe he's just super clingy but separating has been Zayn's ultimate fear and now... they're separated. No matter how small the distance is, it's too far away. The tether tells him he's not gone very far but if they can't see each other then it's too fucking far.

 

Ant and Liv eagerly loop their arms with him as he’s standing there trying to figure out what just happened.

 

“You are one _beautiful_ human bean.” Liv smiles at him as they loop their arms on either side of him, leaving the room now and also going towards the hall, which has Liam’s heart stutter a bit walking around out here now.

 

“Thank you,” Liam laughs nervously at her play on words, “Uh… where are we going?”

 

“We have to show you our room!” They chirp simultaneously.

 

Lux just told them to get him out. He assumed that meant out of the house but, their room sounds okay too.

 

They pass a door that Liam can hear Lux’s angry voice through the other side.

 

 _“He_ **_STARTED IT!”_ **

 

_“Until you get this chip off your shoulder, you are not to leave this house. And you will stay away from the Nephilim,”_

 

Ace’s voice sounds like a grandpa now.

 

Liam zones back into Liv and Ant’s voices as they get further down the hall, looking at Ace’s brown door until he can’t hear Lux or see it anymore as they go _far_ down the hall. Impossibly far.

 

They get to the girls baby blue door that matches their eyes perfectly, right across from the bathroom it turns out.

 

“What did you want to show me?” Liam asks them as the door remains ajar behind him.

 

"We’re not allowed to close the door with boys in our room." Liv tells him when he tries to close it all the way.

 

“Someone _really_ wanted to talk to you before you leave.” Ant smiles in front of him, before standing aside to reveal familiar faces sitting on her pink bed.

 

One, is Louis sprawled on his belly as he shoots at cops on the small TV next to the bed. He must be on some serious sedatives because he doesn’t even blink in Liam’s direction when he walks into the room… which is unusual. But Liam’s eyes linger elsewhere.

 

Next to him, where a blonde haired, teary eyed boy that Liam hasn’t seen in over a month, smiling timidly. His old teammate he wasn’t quite close with but, he’s thought about him a lot since the day after the fire.

 

“Hi Payno.” He smiles, wiping his eyes.

 

“Tom?”

 

*

 

Louis has always been an special kind of dick. The eccentric, creative kind.

 

He didn’t follow the conventional kind of bullying with Liam that most others did. He stuck words mostly because he was someone that talked too much and spoke his mind when no one asked.

 

It could be light-hearted and sweet but be even more deadly than nice.

 

Deadly, but _never_ silent.

 

The difference between him and Zayn was, he conveyed _all_ his damage solely with his sharp tongue rather than his pretty little hands aside from the occasional practical jokes he’d play on Liam when they were kids.

 

When his _words_ touched Liam, it was always with a purpose.

 

Usually, he was out for blood. But not every time. They had their moments when the dust settled and they’d acknowledge that there is some love in there somewhere. But those were very rare times.

 

On a normal day with Liam, when he walked into a room, Louis had something to say. _Always._

 

He chose each and every one of his quick-witted words carefully and with purposeful intent that can slice through you on the spot, kindly or cruelly - something he shared with Zayn.

 

Together, they brought out the _worst_ in each other.

 

Zayn always said he was a fascinating creature that made him laugh so he liked him around when everyone else was pissing him off cause they could just hate the world together, skate around town, get high and get each other off, as Zayn always did with a lot of his mates. But Louis was just his favourite to indulge with, even if they were “broken up”.

 

Now that Liam knows both sides of their relationship and seen all the people Zayn’s ever had sex with - even some people Liam’s never seen before in his _life -_ Zayn actually _was_ the one who constantly cheated. And Liam doesn’t know how he feels about knowing that now so he’s gonna not think about it since it has nothing to do with him.

 

Despite _everything_ , Liam and Louis shared many things together. A childhood. Friends. And one grand fondness: their love for Zayn.

 

Even if it was a war, Louis knew Zayn couldn’t live without Liam and if he wasn’t there, Liam would take care of him. If anything had have happened to Liam in that inferno that shook their lives upside down, Louis would’ve been hurt too.

 

Same goes for Liam with Louis. Even though he didn’t go to his funeral given the circumstances of those traumatising 2 weeks after he died, Liam _did_ care about Louis too and he would’ve went if the situation was normal and not filled with hunting down faulty demon guides.

 

Deep down, Liam knows Louis really has always loved Zayn and he _did_ care about Liam as well, even if he did really shitty things. Zayn did really shitty things too.

 

But the bottom line is, neither Liam or Louis could fight each other when it came to making sure Zayn was okay.

 

Even after everything he said to Liam and Zayn the day he died, he accepted that Zayn would always have Liam and that was all he could really ask for as long as Zayn was happy and in good health.

 

And so Liam and Louis’ relationship in all this was a complex one as well. They were in love with the same boy. They could hate each other for that _and_ love each other for it.

 

While Liam sits with Liv on the floor, leaning against her bed with Tom sitting on Ant’s bed with Ant draped over his back, asking Liam a million things about Niall, Louis lies on his stomach next to Tom and Ant while he plays his video game with a blank expression, not even having looked at Liam or acknowledged him once.

 

His eyes look strange.

 

He’s not really focused on the game. His focus is elsewhere despite what he’s doing and it’s _very_ disconcerting.

 

Liam knows there’s something wrong _here_ too, just the same as it was outside and he can see it all over Louis. He can feel it all over his body, that eerie feeling of being watched. He ignores it for now although he can't stop his hands from shaking a little.

 

“He’s coming back to Manningtree next week _?”_ Tom repeats, hopefully with more tears coming up to his eyes. He’s missed Niall so much, seeing him still cry almost makes Liam want to cry.

 

“That’s what Harry said. Mikey’s having a party sometime next week so, everyone’s going.” Liam nods with a heavy sigh, eyeing Louis carefully from the side of his eye, seeing how his hands shake slightly as well whilst holding the controller.

 

Something’s _really_ wrong with him. Maybe he can feel it too.

 

“Niall said he wants to see you but… it’s probably gonna be hard for him, y’know?”

 

“Why would it be hard? He doesn’t look dead.” Liv shrugs as he tilts her head at Tom.

 

“That’s not the point. He _is_ dead.” Ant rolls her eyes above Tom, shaking through his hair to mess it up.

 

“When we see mom, do you think “damn, she still look pretty good for a dead lady.” ?”

 

Liam almost laughs at their identical voices with their Brooklyn accents.

 

“That’s _different,_ that’s our mother. Of course it’s hard to think about.”

 

Louis finally decides to chime in after being completely unplugged from the conversation with his eyes still on the TV.

 

“Seeing your dead friends would be hard for any normal person because you’re not supposed to see them in more than one life, especially the afterlife. Nialler would be better off staying where he is on the surface, even if he’s technically a demon. Demons can live on Earth and function just like anyone else. You don’t go to hell for someone if you don’t belong here. That’s stupid.” He scoffs and Liam’s brows raise a bit when Louis’ eyes dart over at Liam then back to the TV quickly.

 

He’s _not_ talking about Niall.

 

“Anything else you want to get off your chest there, babe?” Liam smiles up at him, encouraging him to go on. He doesn’t just say shit without reason like that, especially with the parallels in where they are right now.

 

Niall and Liam are in the same positions as far as being demons go. If he switched his own name with Niall in what Louis just said, it would sound like he’s trying to warn him about something.

 

Louis doesn’t say anything to Liam, jerking the controller around as he shoots at the screen with his lip tucked in.

 

“Really? No verbal bitch slaps today?” Liam prods at him.

 

“Do you expect me to drag you everytime I see you, Liam?” Louis laughs, shaking his head.

 

“No… but you usually _try_ it. I’m a bit disappointed, especially after last time.”

 

Ant, Liv and Tom all pull identical “O” faces as they smile at each other at Liam’s moves at dancing dangerously around telling Louis to _try him_ now, subtly asking Louis to go on and say whatever it is he clearly has to say.

 

“I wasn’t dragging you, doll.” Louis shakes his head with his eyes distressfully focused on his game despite his relaxed tone, mismatched like how Lux was.

 

“Since you’re a little slow on the education side of your own culture, you should know the _difference_ . That’s what the gays call a read _._ There’s a difference in coming for someone’s life gratuitously by _dragging_ them and reading them for filth. Only one is actually true. Seeing who your boyfriends are, I’d think you’d be quite used to being read by now.”

 

 _Okay… this is about Ace and Lux?_ Liam thinks, wishing they could communicate telepathically.

 

Louis’ accent is so hard to find the emphasised words because he sounds like someone from West Redding rather than Essex so some of his words are already pronounced a little differently as it is anyways. His typically short “a”’s are longer right now, stressed in the way he emphasises “gratuitous”.

 

Gratuitous being accentuated means… Ace?

 

Louis nods a little, as if he knows Liam’s thought process which gives him an icy chill.

 

“Oooh, there it is. A _subject_.” Tom smiles as Ant giggles on his back.

 

_“Boyfriends.”_

 

“I’d rather not even bring up Z or Luxie in detail for this conversation because I will very much hurt your feelings. I’ve got better things to do with my eternal time than waste it on you here with all these people in the room.”

 

Liam is getting his cleverly encrypted drift now.

 

He can’t talk about them with all the listening ears within the thin walls surrounding them. So for now, they’re gonna just act like they’re dragging each other.

 

“Too bad you couldn’t say that about the first - and last - 17 years of your life.”

 

Louis doesn’t say anything at all, which is…. scarily out of character for the master of all sass and wisdom. Whatever he’s trying to say is layered under a subdued mask. Which means it’s _serious._

 

“Wow, I love this.” Liv laughs next to Liam like she’s watching a juicy TV drama, completely oblivious to what they’re actually saying to each other.

 

Liam isn’t sure if she understands what they’re doing or not or if she’s just a really good actress.

 

“Come one! This place is so boring. Finish your beef _now_. Maybe you’ll move on, Lou.” Ant moans next to him, implying that Louis might still be here right now like this because he’s never settled his skeletons with Liam.

 

He wonders what’s actually keeping Louis here like this, because they’re right. He and Tom both look totally alive still.

 

Apparitions materialise out of your leftover life so they can walk amongst the living. Meaning, there’s something Louis didn’t finish that’s keeping him from crossing over into the spirit world right now.

 

Liam’s ego isn’t _that_ inflated. He highly doubts he’s keeping Louis here. His life did not revolve around Liam.

 

Louis had an affair with a lesbian and got her pregnant right before her girlfriend suffocated in a house fire. He had way more going on up there on the surface than Liam could ever take credit for being the reason he got fucked over when he died.

 

Crooked Johnny from the creepy devil shop said if you die in Manningtree… your soul will never move on because of the curse. And _this place,_ is Manningtree. Liam wonders if that means everyone that dies here will come to Lust like how Nars did, as apparitions. Unless a demon gets to you first. Then you go to Cocytus.

 

“Maybe you’ll get out of here if you finish with me right now.” Liam encourages all their instigating.

 

“Please don’t flatter yourself, Liam.” Louis shakes his head. “I had places to go and people to see in my lifetime and you don’t even exist at the back of the line. You just happened to be in the way.”

 

Liam holds in his lips, taking in it Louis’ very pronounced accent. He doesn’t talk like that.

 

Counting his accented words is actually easy.

 

If he strings together the stressed, accented words, he gets a clear message: Liam is in the way of something.

 

He already figured that out himself earlier. He’s in the way of _Ace and Zayn._

 

Liam goes along with his coded words, following the rhythm of his language to hear his conveyed message.

 

“I wouldn’t move on with my life if I stood off this bed and kicked in your balls for bringing me here with Zayn because in the grand scheme of things, you are irrelevant to me. I almost burned alive in a pyrokinetic love song written by _Satan_ himself after _I found out_ I was gonna be a teenaged _father_ that same night _on the surface_.”

 

Liam squints a little. That was way more the 5 stressed words but whatever. Louis isn’t a poet.

 

There’s over 11 stressed syllables now and Liam gets a very confusing message.

 

_Bringing Zayn… Satan… I found out... father on the surface?_

 

 _Okay Louis_...

 

“My whole life in a nutshell since last month could’ve been a fucking TV drama. My closeted, girlfriend’s girlfriend she was cheating on all year suffocated horribly and she spent the next several weeks fighting me over getting an abortion because of it until I actually died when my ex got cursed, turned into a demon leftover from his past life and ate my soul and sent me to hell. My fucked up life doesn’t even _feature_ you because you are, always have been and always will be the very last thing on my mind. My beef with karma goes far beyond whatever the fuck you _think_ you are to me and I’ve accepted that I’m in hell. So you win regardless of you irrelevancy. You can move on without me. Just be sure to take Luxie’s huge ego out of your ass after he finally fucks you. As long as you’re here now, all you really need to do is stay the fuck out of the way and go home. Simple as shit.”

 

And _there’s_ his read. The crickets don’t get a chance to chirp as he speaks again before anyone else can as Liam processes everything he just gave him.

 

“Although… I think it’s only fair that you know the truth. When you leave, he’s gonna find out the hard way that there is no way out of his predicament because you and I both know how much _everyone_ loves his body and they will never let him go. You and Zayn _don’t belong together._ Zayn will keep leaving you and coming back to hell like an old ex. And one day, his body will stay. Long after you are gone, I’ll still be here and I suggest you don’t try coming back here because you can guess what me and Zayn will be doing for the rest of eternity. Because that is truly the end of our game. You may think you have his burnt heart but that, love, with always reside in the pits of hell. Someone telling you they love you when they _hate_ themselves is like a naked person offering you the shirt off their back. Don’t be deluded by him just because he’s managed to delude himself thinking he’s capable of loving _anything._ A narcissist can _never_ love anyone else.”

 

And _there’s_ his murder Liam asked for and it does hurt Liam. Especially that last part being a genuine attack on Zayn's lack of self-love. Because if you can't love yourself, how can you ever love someone else? Louis' kind of right. You can't give someone your heart if there's nothing inside you.

 

But Zayn isn't empty. Even if his heart is black, wounded, and maybe a little hopeless, _Liam's_ not hopeless. So Liam isn't letting that discourage his conviction.

 

Louis is just a brutal as Zayn. And he tells him everything he needs to know when Louis looks at him finally, the look in his eyes saying,

 

_You get me?_

 

Liam nods at him, looking down into his lap with furrowed brows while Louis looks back at the Tv. He processes Louis’ warning thoroughly as he dissects the right words over again.

 

 _“Shit,”_ Tom blinks to the side as the whole room goes quiet aside from the occasional bombs going off in the background of Louis’ game.

 

“Okay then… I underestimated your level of bite.” Ant says on top of Tom as she shakes her head.

 

“Going for the _jugular…_ you’re could be a marilith Lou Lou.”

 

"A marilith is a cougar right?" Tom continues the conversation.

 

"No, a marilith is like a snake. A  _speed demon_ is a cougar. Or a lion. Any kind of feline."

 

And the conversation moves on with Ant explaining to Tom what different kinds of demons can form as - something she and her sister apparently can't do.

 

To everyone else, Louis just cut off Liam’s balls and handed them back to him in a coffin.

 

No, they weren’t ever friends before but they’ve still known each other for 17 years. When Liam walks into a room, Louis has something to say. Whether it’s to call him some slick name or make fun of him or whatever. They acknowledge each other, even in passing in the hallways at school. That’s just how it’s always been. And they both would always protect Zayn. When Liam walked in here, he knew Tom wasn’t the only one who wanted to talk to him.

 

Louis’ been spending more time around Zayn’s demons than Liam. Obviously he recently learned something he didn’t know before and it’s scared him from speaking about it properly.

 

Ant, Liv and Tom move on then, going back to talking about the principles of whether or not it’s appropriate for people to visit their dead loved ones after they’ve passed while Liam turns over everything Louis said.

 

Zayn is in some kind of danger because he’s demons want his body back here.

 

Louis didn’t say Zayn _._ He only emphasised his _body_.

 

His “love”... is his _heart,_ who presumably lives in Cocytus.

 

Body and soul aren’t the same things. Zayn’s body is worth a _lot_ in hell. If he goes to Cocytus, he won’t be coming back, just like Louis said. He’ll be stuck there with his hheart foreverOr maybe with _someone else._

 

Who even knows what his other demons want. Ira is _seemingly_ the worst thing that can happen to them right now. But maybe it’s not the demons in Cocytus they need to be worried about.

 

Louis also emphasised that he’s already dead. And that Liam will be too if he doesn’t leave soon.

 

And… then the real insanity begins for Liam.

 

First, Liam’s ear picks up whispering outside. It’s not very loud but, it’s still there. And it sounds like Zayn.

 

His gut tells him it’s Zayn. And he _listens._

 

He zones out of the conversation around him as he looks at the ground, listening to Zayn’s voice further away in the house somewhere, unable to decipher what he’s saying.

 

He listens for a few seconds until his phone blares in his ears, _loud_ as it rings out, which is strange. He swears he put his phone on vibrate earlier. He sees that it’s Harry who he’s been ignoring calls from all day. But something in his gut tells him this isn’t the time to answer yet. So he continues to listen to his gut and ignores the call, putting his phone on vibrate again, trying to focus on Zayn’s voice as he squints at the ground. But the whispering has stopped now as he listens for it.

 

Immediately after, Harry shoots him an urgent text begging Liam to answer the phone _now_ and to make sure no one else is around as it starts ringing again… _with the sound on._

 

His heart accelerates as he stares down at the phone blaring again.

 

Before he can answer, he drops his phone in shock when something passes by the corner of his eye, quickly looking over at the slightly ajar door with wide eyes as his heart thumps widely after it’s paused it’s rhythm.

 

Someone was standing in the door.

 

He _swears_ he just saw them walk by, leaving where they’ve been standing and the glimpse of his familiar profile, even in his peripheral vision, was indisputable.

 

He was older. Much older than Ava or Tony.

 

_Was that… Ace?_

 

Maybe he just walked by. No, Liam’s not gonna lie to himself for comfort right now, he knows what he saw. He was standing there for a while.

 

He could feel it the entire time, that feeling of being watched but he just wasn’t acknowledging it when he was talking to Louis.

 

Demons are fast. But Liam is faster.

 

“Hey are you alright?” Liv’s voice startles Liam as he jumps, looking back over at her all jittery as he gasps, blinking rapidly in synch with his heart.

 

 _“Um…”_ He looks down at his phone, still ringing on the floor, picking it up and turning it over once as they all look at him with confusion at his jumpiness.

 

“I have to take this… I’ll be right back,” Liam stands up, gesturing to his phone but Ant grabs his arm.

 

“Liam your phone’s not ringing.” She says slowly. Liam looks down at the screen, seeing Harry calling again.

 

“... yes it is.” He shows it to her put she doesn’t even look at it, pulling him back down.

 

 _“Antonia.”_ Liv hisses at her sister.

 

They have a tense moment as they fall quiet again. Louis keeps his eyes on the TV along with Tom, who isn’t paying them any attention as he grabs a controller and joins Louis. And Liam’s phone rings again.

 

“Liam wait!”

 

Ant calls out for him to stop as Liam quickly leaves the room and stands outside of the door. Something weird in the works and he doesn’t know if he can trust Ant and Liv.

 

Why wouldn’t they want him to answer his phone?

 

He answers once he’s alone, standing right outside the door as he looks down the empty hall both ways, asking Harry what’s wrong on the way out. Louis watches him go with his lips sucked in, worry all over his face.

 

“What’s with him?” Tom looks back at Louis as he laughs when Liam leaves. “His phone wasn’t ringing was it?”

 

Ant and Liv exchange some quiet looks across from each other.

 

“He looked like he just seen a ghost!”

 

Louis only shakes his head.

 

“There’s lots of ghosts in this haunted house, isn’t it?” He murmurs quietly, setting a car of fire.

 

Outside, Liam seems to answer his dumb phone too late as it hangs up when he says hello.

 

He squints at his phone now. It’s only 6:57 p.m.

 

The thing with Liam’s cellphone is very important to him right now. It’s his point of reference on this etheric plane. No matter how long he feels like he’s been here, 2 weeks or months or years, his phone will always tell him how much time is actually going by. Because his phone’s time based off the surface’s measurement. Everything around him appears slower but his phone will never lie to him about where he really is in time on the surface. So when he’s talking on the phone with Harry, it might feel like they talk for hours but he looks at his phone again and only a few minutes will have actually past.

 

But where he really is _right now…._ he has no fucking clue.

 

As he looks down the hall again, it stretches out _way_ too far. The girls blue door isn’t even behind him. It’s like he walked outside and the door disappeared behind him.

 

Actually, as he looks down the hall again, the door is a little ways down.

 

Liam squints in confusion and looks down at his feet.

 

He hasn’t moved his feet once. He didn’t…walk down the hall… _did he?_ He can’t remember.

 

He must not have noticed. Even a few feet away, it seems like a massive distance to not notice how far away he’d come. It’s so _quiet_ out here alone. And creepy.

 

He makes his way back down the hall slowly with his breath shaking almost uncontrollably. For some reason, he can’t stop shaking. Even the grip his hand has clutching his phone won’t stop vibrating. And his skin is getting colder and colder the closer to their door he gets.

 

His body is reacting to something he can’t see.

 

In the back of his mind, all he can think right now is that someone was definitely listening to them in the room.

 

It’s been awhile since Lux went to Ace. Ace could be watching them now. But… why?

 

 

The further down the dark, stone walkway he gets the more he thinks can he indistinct whispers sounding through the walls again, coming from the door. He can’t tell if it’s actually Zayn’s voice or not anymore. It’s just… whispering. But the closer he gets, the tighter the walls feel, like they’re closing in on him as he forgets how to breath without air, growing darker and darker .  
  
  
  
Suddenly, the whispering stops again.  
  
  
  
Behind him, a faint creak sounds like old wood being walked over… except the floor isn’t made of wood here. It makes him jump almost out of his body, parts of him leaving and snapping back in painfully like the snap of an elastic band inside his body, ripping out and slamming back in.  
  
  
  
He catches his heart before it can leap out through his mouth when he freezes, taking in his surroundings with an attempt to calm his breath and focus. He has no idea where he is and the crickets are dead silent.  
  
  
  
Silence that makes you feel crazy.  
  
  
  
He’s walked so far away from any familiar point of reference, he’s never noticed how long the hallway is. Like the closer he gets to the door, the further away it seems. He wants to go back to the room now. Leaving was a mistake.  
  
  
  
You’d think it’d just be easier to just turn back around and go back to where he came from but this hallway is starting to look like one of those infinity halls in fun houses where you’re walking around in circles but the walls go unnoticed as they all move around you in plain sight so it looks like a different room entirely when you stop and take in where the fuck you are exactly again.  
  
  
  
It reminds him that’s he’s inside a giant mirror right now and objects appear closer and further away than what they really are.  
  
  
  
He’s… lost.  
  
  
  
Is this a hallucination? He thinks it is.  
  
  
  
He's experienced minor breaks in reality a few times, like when he'd look at mirrors and start having subtle delusions. Except... Liam knows those were never hallucinations. And neither is _this_.

 

Mirror or not, this just doesn’t seem right. It’s not the fantasised gore and violence or even the supernatural shit that could scare him more than this. Because the situation appears totally normal.

 

He’s alone in an empty hallway. But… that’s not reality. Everything wrong is just hidden in plain sight.

 

He stops walking then, deciding that he IS just walking in circles now. Like he’s just walking in place as the walls adjust around him to give him the illusion that he’s moving.  
  
  
Liam isn’t stupid. He knows this hall doesn’t really look like this. Too long and too dark too see clearly. Everything looks identical to the warped and fake illusions of space in the mirror.  
  
  
Lux is right, he can tell what’s real from what’s fake.

 

And he has no idea what the fuck his brain is doing right now because he’s seeing this hallway like it’s much longer than what it really is with no door anywhere in sight. Even if he knows it’s not real, walking around in it feels… insane. Cause it looks so real and it’s not going away.  
  
  
Something weird is happening to him. Where he appears to be feels real. But he knows it’s not.  
  
  
After waiting for a few excruciating seconds in stillness, the whispering starts up again so he slowly turns around and follows it, finding the girls blue door he hadn’t noticed cracked open now.  
  
  
He walked right past it. It looks… different. And it’s closer than he thought it was.  
  
  
The whispering must be all their voices. It seems to be coming from there, slurping in and out of Liam’s ears, clear as daylight, compelling him to go towards it.  
  
  
Liam swallows hard and the sound of it in his throat echoes outloud around him.  
  
  
Internally, something in his gut tells him to turn away, this is the wrong direction.  
  
  
_Go back._  
  
  
But as he looks down the hall, it’s so dark and cramped… like if he kept walking, he’d be too big at the end and get stuck in the walls. The other direction seems the same. All there is now is this lone door and it’s whispers beckoning him to come.  
  
  
_Go. Back._  
  
  
He can’t go back. There’s nothing down there.  
  
  
_Go._ _BACK!_  
  
  
_“Stop!”_ Liam hisses, quickly covering his mouth.  
  
  
The whispering in his ear is just… so _invasive_. Like a mosquito buzzing there. Suddenly, an actual mosquito touches his ear and Liam slaps at it quickly as his chest begins to moving up and down faster.  
  
  
There is no mosquito. His brain’s senses are DEFINITELY lying to him.  
  
  
He feels like he’s being too loud even though he isn’t moving.  
  
  
His legs bend up slowly as he lets go of the ground, floating and holding his breath so as not to make one sound, making himself light on his feet so he’s as silent as the sound of the flowers in the marsh on the roof, pattering like a rainstorm above as he listens closely.  
  
  
The storm is real. And so is the whispering. His surrounding are not.  
  
  
He listens to the storm outside in the background of the whispers so it’s not so entrancing with the contrast of sounds.  
  
  
When he comes up to the door, the cool air it emits chills his skin. He doesn’t remember it being this cold. It shouldn’t be. Nowhere in this house should be this cold.  
  
  
It feels like a poltergeist. It’s not the familiar cold from before, this one feels… different.

 

 _Icier_ .  
  
  
Before, the heat was just leaving. Here now, the cold is being emitted.

 

One thing for sure here thought, the tether leads right into this room.  
  
  
His peaking is as small as a strand of hair as he looks into the dark room, the whispers echoing through the space like ghosts singing to him. His eyes don’t adjust to the dark straight away but the flare of light in his eyes almost behaves like headlights now as he focuses the energy inside him to allow him to see in the dark.  
  
  
The light beams around, low and faint and the room appears to be an empty bedroom with a cool mist hanging in the air like leaves dangling in the wind, a visible white fog all around without a bed in sight.  
  
  
The walls are painted dark red instead of blue. This isn’t the right room.  
  
  
Instead of furniture, mountains and mountains of clothes are thrown all over the floor and all over one lone, massive wardrobe that seems to be the source of where the cold is coming from, like a freezer.

 

The clothes look like groups of people wearing their shadows.

  
  
Whoever’s room this belongs to is a real slob. All their clothes are on the floor rather than in the closet.  
  
  
When he looks outside in the hall again, this appears to be the only room at all anymore.  
  
  
The whispering starts again as Liam glides into the freezing room, turning down his sight as his eyes adjust to the dark finally, seeing a vent near the wardrobe, the source of the voices. The wardrobe next to the vent is definitely the source of the cold, being this close to it now. There must be a blizzard in there.  
  
  
When he bends down in front of the hollowing vent and listens closely, he hears that it’s Latin.  
  
  
Zayn’s voice chanting the same thing over and over in between pausing. The tether goes straight through the vent, where he is on the other side.  
  
  
It doesn’t sound like the pretty way the romance language sounds when Lux speaks it. That scary occultish way that Satanists do it, polyphonic and as ominous as the demons who reside within these walls chant back with him.  
  
  
He quickly takes out his phone and finds the mic to record so he can translate it, squatting on the ground and looking through the vent to catch the sound in his voice memos.  
  
  
When he looks through the vent, leading far on the other side of the house, he sees them now.  
  
  
Lux is sitting on the ground with his arms on each side, perfectly still with his eyes completely _white_ as an older man stands in front of him, chanting shit in his ears.  
  
  
It’s in Liam’s ears too and it’s lead him to this vent.

  
  
He looks like Zayn’s great grandfather from behind with his dark grey head of hair and small frail body of a weak old man. Very pale skin, thin like paper. Like it wouldn’t take that much to rip.  
  
  
That was not who Liam got a glimpse of at the twins doorway.

 

He’s too _old_. He looks like he’d break his hip if he tried to move too fast. But it doesn’t matter because this is NOT okay.  
  
  
He IS compelling him.  
  
  
Liam’s breath is racing like a fucking horse on a track, shaking as he watches Ace compel Lux through the vent, holding his phone between his fingers against the metal as he catches every last word.  
  
  
He repeats the same thing over and over again. The only reason Liam knows he’s repeating himself because he can hear Lux in his ear too like an echo, loud and clear as he says that one part of his name.  
  
  
**Mementos mori, ars moriendi vanitas. Astrum moriendi.**  
  
  
  
Lux keeps saying that no matter what Ace says and it’s not translating well on his phone. He keeps saying moriendi . And Ace is saying a bunch of shit Liam doesn’t even know is Latin or not. And Lux just says his name back and Liam momentarily can’t move.  
  
  
He can’t blink. Can’t think. Can’t breath or feel his heart banging against his ribs, trying to get out of it’s cage. Can’t stop the tears dripping off his chin.  
  
  
He’s terrified of what he’s seeing and it’s seizing up his body. Because he’s _brainwashing_ him, reminding him of something and beating it into his skull so he doesn’t forget, making him repeat it 100 times over.  
  
  
**“Dividit tamquam linguae ignis, flagellum dei,”** **  
**  
  
Liam blood drains as he catches that one perfectly. At least the “flagellum dei” part.  
  
  
Struck by God.  
  
  
_Cursed._  
  
_  
__‘...cloven tongues, like as of fire, scourge of God.’_ His phone translates for him and of course, google is shit so, the translation doesn’t make any sense as it’s probably rearranged backwards from the sound of how distorted Ace’s voice is.  
  
  
Two tongues, divided and cursed like fire? Or… two divided tongues, cursed by fire? He doesn’t know how to arrange it to make sense in English.  
  
  
But, Narcissus had a thing for dividing things with double meanings, right? So he’d have a loophole in retaining part of his humanity?

 

His vanitas had about 8 different interpretations for his curse alone.

 

Would Ace be telling him to do… the _opposite?_  
  
  
He’s sending this to Harry to translate for him since he will never figure it out himself.  
  
  
Lux repeats his name and mantra again.

  
  
**“Vitium vel maximum, vitium aeternum.”** **  
**  
  
His phone doesn’t understand that one perfectly either.  
  
  
Maximum is pretty self-explicative. And then something about sin he’s repeated… and Liam thinks that last word means “eternity” since aeter or aether is the eternal element. Does Zayn even have that kind of aether anymore? This translation isn’t coherent. If Liam tries to translate it himself from the words he’s picked up, he gets…  
  
_Cardinal sin forever???_ _  
_  
  
Whatever it means, he’s calling it evil.

  
Lux drones his name again along with the two other things in his little mantra about vanity and _“astrum moriendi”._

 

Ace says something, Lux says his name and the other two again. Vanity. Astrum moriendi.

 

Liam realises that’s not really Lux’s name… it’s his purpose.

 

_“Remember to die.”_

 

And the second one is Zayn’s.

 

 _Emptiness_.

 

Then the last one… Liam doesn’t exactly know what it means but his brain aligns to tell him… it’s _his._

 

And they do the same repetitive ritual again.

 

And again. And _again_ . And every time, Liam’s blood, dark red and warm, turns to blue ice more and more as he holds his breath until he thinks his skin is actually turning blue.  
  
  
Their voices are so haunting. It touches him and freezes inside. Or maybe that’s just this freezing room, growing colder and colder by the second. It’s only a matter of time before all the heat is sucked out and his blood actually freezes, leaving him to be a statue.

 

But he can’t turn into a statue now. He needs to _move._  
  
  
It’s settled. They have to get the fuck out of here. Not just Liam, all of them.  
  
  
  
Suddenly, something begins to slowly send Liam’s body into fully shocked panic as the limit to how much his body can really take is put to the ultimate test, cancelling any ability he was mustering to make a run for it and do what? He doesn’t even know. Because it’s too late to do anything now as his phone vibrates against the metal after he gets a text at the _worst_ possible moment, buzzing loud all throughout the vent before he can rip his hand away, fumbling to not drop it as he slaps his hand over his mouth to cover his white breath tight, in terror .  
  
  
The whispering stops all at once as Ace whips around towards the vent at the speed of someone who is 1,000 years younger than what an old man should be moving as.  
  
  
But he’s not an old man. He’s an old demon.  
  
  
Liam throws himself out of the way just as fast before he’s seen, missing seeing Ace’s face as well but he catches his eyes.

 

They weren’t black or brown. They were _white_. Like a stone-blind person.  
  
  
Lux never mentioned that his brother was blind but he came from Nars’ eyes so he might’ve been his blindness.  
  
  
Liam falls on the ground anyways in the process, against a pile of musty old clothes that smell like decomposition and _death_ , gagging when the reeking stinch overpowers his nose.  
  
  
He spits up sizzling acid in his mouth and swallows it so he won’t vomit, keeping down the festering black bile that’s beginning to squeeze out of the dark lining in his gut that he should’ve been listening too, because his gut warnings are his demon warning him to make sure Liam doesn’t put himself in danger, like he’s just done.  
  
  
He endures the pain in silence, pulling his legs up to his chest as he tries to fight against having a panic attack or hyperventilating with the strain of every muscle and vein in his body.  
  
  
But he can’t fight it forever. Panic barges into you and takes your body captive for hours .  
  
  
He doesn’t know how long he sits still, suffering in silence with the boiling in his stomach he keeps down.  
  
  
20 minutes go by.

  
A _hour_.  
  
  
He’s keeping his mouth covered and his eyes squeezed as tight as possible although the tears still fall ceaselessly and the air freezes them on his face along with freezing his limbs so he can’t move at all, even if he wanted to.  
  
  
The smell of these clothes touching him… _god,_ he can’t be sick. He has to keep it all in.

 

It feels like he’s gonna burst but he bites down on his tongue and holds it in, drawing blood in his mouth before the wound seals up, only to bite through his tongue again. It’s the only thing he can move for what feels like _hours_ until the numbness finally makes the pain stop.  
  
  
Very slowly, he opens his eyes again and across from him he sees that he’s sitting in front of a mirror against the far wall, staring him down intently like always.

 

He looks away from himself to look at his phone lit up in his hand instead.  
  
  
Harry has sent him some new images again, urging him to show them to Lux and Zayn.  
  
  
He want to tell Harry to stop TEXTING him but the annoyance and urge to tell Harry to leave him alone is squashed over bigger priorities. He doesn’t want to be left alone.

 

He strains for his fingers to move, texting him back with his rigid fingers with each stroke of the screen.  
  
  
It’s a short text but it feels like it takes him hours to type it all out. It’s not really hours. The clock on his phone tells him it only takes a few minutes but to him, the time stretches out for far too long.  
  
  
His heart is beating too fast and the silence is too loud, screaming in one ear and whispering in the other as the mosquito that isn’t really there comes back and crawls into his ear again. Even as he bats it away, it’s still there, crawling around and making too much noise for him to focus.  
  
  
His heart isn’t even a beat anymore from how fast it’s going - just one constant thump in a single frequency like a hummingbird.  
  
  
He makes eye contact with himself again, seeing that he’s actually shaking in the mirror even though he can’t feel it. If he’s shaking, then he’s making noise. Unless his reflection is moving without him…

 

He doesn’t even care, he just has to hold still. The thumping is unbearably loud in his ears as they throb.  
  
  
So then…. he makes his heart stop beating altogether so he makes no noise.  
  
  
He wills himself to hold still and be _quiet_ , forcing his body to touch a level of absolute _zero_.  
  
  
He should be dead. But his demon isn’t dying that easily.

 

  
His pit continues to pulse inside in place of his heart and it adapts its function to keep him alive, like a second heart in his body, keeping him from going into full-on cardiac arrest.  
  
  
The absolute submission to his pit frees his body to the demon.  
  
  
He can move again. But he can feel _everything_ overlapping in him now, detached from it all as the demon part of him is left to deal with it the panicked heart attack.  
  
  
He can feel that his body is continuing to panic without him and the voices resume their mission to beat _him_ into the ground now as the hallucinating gets back into the ass kicking.  
  
  
_“Liam? Liam, is that you?”_ Zayn’s voice echoes in his head.

 

 _It’s in his head._  
  
  
Liam shakes his head, choking down his sob silently, biting through his tongue again.  
  
  
_‘Please don’t do this to me right now.’_  
  
  
He’s begging God to let up on the myriad of assaults festering all at once. The voices and hallucinations were horrifying on a normal day. He can’t hear this right now.

 

He begs it to leave his head, telling himself it’s not real. The voices aren’t really there.  
  
  
He screams at himself that it’s not real. He can tell what’s really there from what’s not. It’s just like a hallucination, he isn’t really there. Hearing things he’s never heard before means he’s dreaming. Or having a nightmare. Uncontrollable, intrusive _nightmares_.  
  
  
The whispering won’t stop.  
  
  
No matter what he does, covering his ears, he still hears the whispers from people who aren’t really there.  
  
  
He wants to scream at them to leave him _alone_.  
  
_  
__It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream. It isn’t real. He isn’t here._ _  
_

He isn’t here. He’s _never_ been here, there’s no one here.

 

Liam repeats this to himself inside with his eyes throbbing as he cries.

  
_  
__“I thought I’d never see you again!”_ Zayn’s false voice cries, louder now. _“Look, I finished it,”_  
  
  
“Please, God please… stop,” Liam gasps quietly as he sobs now, his shortness of breath choking him up and squeezing his nerves.  
  
  
It’s that old familiar feeling of an asthma attack trying to take his breath away as he chokes up.  
  
  
It doesn’t stop despite his demon. His breath continues to get stolen away from him before he can use it like he’s suffocating.  
  
  
“ _Look at you, you’re so scared.”_ Zayn laughs, but Liam refuses to look at _him_.

 

_He’s not here._

 

“Here, I want you to have it now.” He opens his eyes and sees Zayn right in front on him even giving Liam some kind of piece of paper with his handwriting on it.

  
They stare at each other in silence, Zayn smiling with his fake smile and Liam’s tears falling all over.

 

This has _never_ happened to him before.  
  
  
“Read it now.” He smiles, his voice as clear as his eyesight rather that far away.  
  
  
Liam’s shortness of breath pushes up throat as his hands squeeze his ears, the whispering in his head growing stronger. They’re telling him to… _remember his name._

 

He can’t remember his name for the _life_ of him but the voice insists in his head.

  
  
_Remember their names. Remember their names. Remember their names._  
  
  
Liam has _had_ it.

 

He wipes off his face as he glares at _nightmare_ Zayn in front of him, making him see all this shit that’s all _lies_.

 

“What’s wrong?” He frowns now, scooting away from Liam like _he’s_ the one that’s afraid.

  
  
“Just… **STOP!”** Liam’s voices finally break out into the air as his hands let go of his ears, swinging down in front of him and letting go of everything squeezing in his body at this _imposter_ .  
  
  
He ignites all the energy he can feel blistering under his skin and pushes it out of him now with every muscle in his body right at him.

 

It goes straight through him as the illusion finally disappears as hot white light shoots out of Liam through the wall, demolishing it and shattering the mirror into pieces as it rebounds around the room, lighting it up completely so he can finally see as the light bounces around, flickering like a disco as he ducks out of the way.  
  
  
The room is actually very small. The walls _are_ dark red, like blood, and there’s no one in here but Liam and his identical reflection he just destroyed in the mirror aside from all the clothes piled on top of each other and the wardrobe.  
  
The ball of light topples over several mountains of clothes that all evaporate where the light touches around the room, bouncing off the surfaces like a funky light show and, turning everything it touches into straight ash on the ground in the blink of an eye.  
  
  
The whispering all stops abruptly with a faint hiss like a faucet being turned off and the light dies finally so he’s engulfed in the dark again.  
  
  
Liam’s chest heaves as he blinks with wide eyes, seeing the wall staying in place but the ash from the clothes… that’s real. He just did that.  
  
  
Also what he can see clearly, there’s no glass on the ground. Which means… there was no mirror in this room.  
  
  
_“What? Liam will you speak up for fuck sake, I can’t hear you!”_  
  
  
It’s… _Harry’s_ voice now instead of Zayn’s, only his voice is _really_ there.  
  
  
Liam’s eyes see his phone he’s dropped on the floor, quickly picking it up.  
  
  
He hadn’t realised he answered the phone, quickly trying to quiet him instead of hanging up.  
  
  
“Harry--”  
  
_  
__“What the fuck is happening!?! LIAM!”_  
  
  
The voices from the vent are gone but he’s too afraid to see what’s happening now.  
  
  
Everything is still as he stares into the empty space he thought was a mirror, freezing his ass off next to this wardrobe. He can feel the stench crawling all over his skin, scratching up his arms as he gags again in his dry mouth from the nausea bubbling up in his stomach. He has to get out of this disgusting room. He’s dizzy and his breath is still short and his pit is combatting against his ongoing panic attack tirelessly and his hallucinations are _attacking him_.  
  
  
He needs to get out and go home.  
  
  
Something insidious is lurking through these halls and it’s attaching to Liam and whispering in his fucking head and bolting him to the ground but he’s too scared to even disappear out there in that strange hall again.  
  
  
They all have to go home. Louis and Tom can come too. Maybe Xhane can give them some of her nan’s cerements so they can come out of this abyss and walk around on the surface instead.  
  
  
He watches the darkness he just lit up and charred, pulsing around him like it’s in pain from his _own_ attack on it, throbbing around him in time with his pounding heart, pounding so hard now with his pit that it _hurts_ his chest and he can’t make his pit stop hurting him.  
  
  
Liam gasps rough as he chokes up again, holding his chest to breath through it, squeezing inside as he forces his pit back down, away from his heart. He can feel it trying to slither back up but he keeps forcing it back down with his hand, mimicking the sins in the Acheron again.

 

He’s never had a break like this but he can get through this if he just waits out his body. It’s gonna wear itself out and stop trying to make him panic as long as he doesn’t cave.  
  
  
He brings the phone back up to his ear then.  
  
  
_“--t’s happening? Tell me what’s going on please Liam--”_  
  
  
“Harry, I’m fine. Why are calling?” Liam rasps low, holding his breath now.  
  
  
He’d rather say that they can’t stay anymore but he’s afraid someone might be listening. He feels paralyzed. All he can move is his lips and his eyes again without the demon taking over. But the assault on his mind has stopped completely.

 

No one’s voice but Harry’s.  
  
_  
__“I’m calling you about you father. Are you actually fine or is something happening?”_  
_  
__  
__‘My father? Seriously? What in the fuck?!’_ _  
_  
  
Liam bites down hard on his trembling lip as his head nods back, squeezing his eyes closed.

 

His skin is _quivering_. Like it’s made of water and whatever has been holding him together is about to collapse on the ground. But he holds himself together soundly. No spacing out or leaving everything behind in his body.  
  
  
He can get through this.  
  
  
This is just psychological. Like a mind game. Jokes on whoever is trying to get in his mind because there’s nothing there as he wiped it all clean after the light shot out. When his mind is clear, he can’t hear the voices but his senses are still fucked up. He knows what’s he’s feeling isn’t real. Sensory perception and physical stimulation can be manipulated out of his control. But no one controls Liam’s mind but _him_.  
  
  
The walls aren’t really breathing with him and the darkness isn’t really watching him and there are no whispers that live in his head and there was no man that looked like him standing in the door or sitting across from him.

 

These things are being projected on inanimate objects from _something else._ Someone else is breathing with him in this room and watching him in the dark and whispering in his ear, making his mind and body just have a _conniption_.

 

That scratching at his skin felt pretty real with his almost asthma attack though.  
  
  
But this will pass. It always does.  
  
  
_“Yes.”_  
  
  
It’s all he can manage to say.  
  
  
Harry will know what he means. He can’t talk.

 

The walls are listening. The walls as in whoever is _in_ these walls.

 

He can’t talk in this house. The walls might not be alive but there’s other beings that are alive in this house. Or close by.Maybe they’re not in the room but it’s still fucking him up.  
  
  
Hs senses are just too fucked up to see anything but the hallucination of being lost and alone.  
  
_  
__“Where is Zayn? Say yes if you know where Zayn is.”_ _  
_  
  
Liam shakes his head.  
  
  
_“No,”_ He chokes up a little as he hiccups. He can feel the stress closing in on him rapidly but he can’t let himself space out. If he does it now, he might never find his body again.  
  
_  
__“Okay, okay, hold on, stay on the phone, yeah? I need to get a better signal so I can hear. DON’T HANG UP!”_  
  
  
Liam doesn’t know what else to do.  
  
_  
__“Okay.”_

  
  
The other line shuffles a bit as Harry moves around on the other line.  
  
  
Liam holds the phone against his chest as he breathes in and out steadily, trying to cast out his emotion so he can focus without his panic and anxiety getting in the way to no avail. He’s too paralyzed to do much of anything as he trembles and sweats profusely. But he can breathe again and his heart is beating again. So he’s still alive.  
  
  
His eyes open again, darting to the vent and forces his prickly limbs up as he leans over and takes a chance to look, ducking up and gazing inside.  
  
  
Ace is gone.  
  
  
But Lux is still sitting with his back against the wall, stunned with white eyes still. Liam’s face crumbles. He can’t even try to talk to him.  
  
  
_“Hello? Liam? Are you still there?”_  
  
  
Liam lifts the phone to his ear again.  
  
_  
__“Harry we have to come home.”_ Liam just goes on and says it, quickly.  
  
_  
__“I dunno what’s going on. I have no idea what’s going on--”_  
_  
__  
__“Okay okay, I can get you. I can come back there right now we’re right here--”_ _  
__  
_  
_“No!”_ Liam winces.  
  
_  
__“No you can’t come right now. There’s… fuck,”_ Liam coughs on his words as he watches Lux sitting there helplessly, looking between the vent and the door as he waits for Ace to just barge in and murder him _gratuitously_.  
  
  
_“There’s bad stuff happening right now and I dunno what to do.”_ His voice breaks off at the end.  
  
_  
__“Are you sitting down?”_ _  
_  
  
Liam nods.  
  
_  
__“... are you nodding?”_ Harry adds. Liam nods again, as if Harry can see that.  
  
  
_“Liam I’m coming down there right now. I still have that obsidian key we bought from the devil shop. Just tell me where you are I can open a door and be right there, with Mikey and Ben and Tony--”_  
  
_  
__“No Harry just--”_ Liam squeezes his eyes hard again.  
  
  
The doors are all _fake_ he can’t come here right now or _ever_.

  
  
The obsidian key opens doors to wherever you decide to go, like teleportation. Only, the catch about that is it only opens doors _inside._ Not out. But regardless of that catch, if he opens the wrong door here, he could walk right into a trap like Liam has.  
  
_  
__“Just talk to me.”_ He grips his phone. Harry might open one into fucking _Avaritia’s_ room. He needs to stay put.  
  
  
“What about my father?”  
  
  
_“I… don’t think this is a good time, we can talk about him later--”_  
  
  
“Harry, just talk to me, please!”  
  
  
_“Your dad’s in town, Liam.”_ Harry sighs. _“Just keep breathing, love. Concentrate on your breathing. I’m right here with you.”_ _  
_  
  
Liam’s hand squeezes the phone tighter as his head presses into the wall, resisting the urge to punch through the stone.  
  
  
He just nods.

  
  
“Okay. T-that’s o-okay.” he murmurs. “I can handle that. I can’t handle being surrounded by this, I’m LOSING it. I’m hearing voices and seeing people that aren’t there and Louis is afraid too… I can handle my dad. I can’t handle this. I feel fucking _psychotic_. I’m losing all control of myself--”    
  
  
Liam hears a noise behind him, quickly jerking back around, throwing another stream of light out at nothing, disintegrating more disgusting clothes.  
  
  
Fuck this. _Absolutely_ fuck this. He doesn’t care if he sees his dad, this house is hell, he’s getting Zayn and getting _out_.  
  
  
“I just talked to my mother like… a few minutes ago up there.” Liam shakes his head as he loses his breath again.  
  
  
“Why… why wouldn’t she tell me he was in town...?”  
  
_  
__“I don’t think she knows he’s here.”_

  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
  
_“No one knows he’s here yet.”_ _  
__  
__  
_ “Then how do you know he’s there?”  
  
_  
__“We just saw him.”_  
  
_  
__“... where?”_  
  
_  
__“Liam please don’t freak out--”_ _  
_  
  
“Damn it Harry just tell me!” Liam hisses as he looks around the room with paranoia. The piles of clothes look like people watching him. It smells like dead people.  
  
  
_‘What is WRONG with me?’_ _  
_  
  
He has never tripped this hard before. Maybe those flowers are laced with fucking DMT.  
  
_  
__“We were were riding by the opening in the woods and we saw him! I don’t know if he was coming out or going in but--”_

  
  
Harry keeps talking but Liam abruptly zones out of it, covering his face before going through his hair several times in frustration.

  
  
This is just fantastic. Absolutely sane.  
  
  
_What IS THIS?_

 

So Geoff is just hanging out in the woods where the devil and witches hold nightly seances and sing Kumbaya at the moon after leaving for almost a decade for no fucking reason, yeah? That’s not suspicious at ALL.  
  
  
“How fluent are you in Latin?” he finds himself asking Harry again.  
  
  
One thing at a time. One. At a time.  
  
  
His sweating so bad and he can’t stop trembling. But he makes his voice cooperate with his thoughts.  
  
  
_“You said you have audio files?”_  
  
  
“If I send you it, can you translate it? I recorded something I need you to tell me what it’s saying but you have to be careful when you listen to it, it’s like an hour long I think and it’s Latin liturgy for compulsion and it’s… fucking with me really bad right now Harry. Don’t get immersed or use headphones. And don’t distract yourself with something constant so it won’t heighten your suggestibility and hypnotise you. Play like, soft music in the background. And burn something vital. Like some sage and spearmint and take your hippie energy bath right after and drink some tonic tea… and don’t let anyone else hear it! Delete it off your phone when you’re done.” Liam rushes as the words all fall out at once rapidly as his brain aligns for a few seconds and spits out all the knowledge he’s acquired over the last few weeks on how to keep your mind from being invaded by hypnosis. Opening your mind to suggestion leaves a few loose doors open for a while which means anything can just slink into you. Harry has been seduced at least once today so his suggestibility is higher that usual still.  
  
  
_“Okay bud, send it to me now. I’ll translate it as fast as I can.”_ _  
_ _  
_  
“Haz you have to be VERY careful, do everything I said!”  
  
  
_“Liam, who the hell do you think you’re talking to? I’m the one who told you everything you just fucking told me to do.”_  
  
  
Oh yeah.  
  
  
“There you are, Payne! What are you doing in here?”  
  
  
Liam looks up at the door slowly with his seized heart as his pit shrinks back into a grape, like the _demon_ inside is suddenly afraid too.  
  
  
There’s only one person that’s ever just called him “Payne”.

  
  
He suddenly remembers that Louis said _father on the surface._ Now how the fuck would Louis have known that from _here_ ?

 

Liam wasn’t hallucinating.  
  
  
“Long time no see, old friend.” His dad smiles at him.  
  
_  
__“Liam, love are you there? I said send it to me--”_ _  
_  
  
Liam hangs up the phone as his hand drops, along with everything else he can feel.  
  
  
He finally showed up. Liam could feel him from a thousand miles away, the thousand miles of that long hallway, echoing that emotionless, coldness like he always has, sucking the life out of him, along with the heat, until he couldn’t breathe. And Liam’s body completely shuts down in the face of this reality. Because he is _real._ Liam can scream that he doesn’t really exist and he’s not here until his throat bleeds but he’s known he was real since birth and he’s finally shown his ugly face instead of hiding behind the dark now.

 

“We’ll catch up later Payne.”

 

Liam can’t even speak.  
  
  
“Liam I said get out of there! This is my dad’s room!”

 

Ant’s voice cuts through the room that suddenly looks very small and very… un- alive like before as Liam meets her eyes at the door now after one blink.  
  
  
The hallway isn’t black. It’s all stone a light behind her. He doesn’t even move or speak as Ant lifts him up and drags him out. The only natural reaction Liam has is to gag really hard, but he hasn’t ate today and the acid from his pit seems to have evaporated with the shit show he just went through so his throat just contracts roughly with sick numbness in his hands and feet.  
  
  
These clothes… this wardrobe. It’s all _Ava’s_.  
  
  
As Ant rushes him out with her, he glances at the vent at he goes.  
  
  
Lux is gone now.  
  
  
Also… the wardrobe he was sitting next to that feels like a freezer just got a whole new sickening feeling.  
  
  
There’s human bodies in there.  
  
  
Ant closes the door behind him and the hall is all normal again. No voices or freaky distortions or thoughts that are telling him to do things he doesn’t want to do to lure him into fucking nut rooms.  
  
  
But… Liam’s soul is shaken to his _core_. Like everything in his surroundings just tried to pull him out but failed, leaving his body throbbing so hard, he knows it burns and aches on the outside but Liam can’t feel a thing on the inside.  
  
  
He feels like he just looked the devil in the face for hours unblinkingly. The only thing wrong about that is… it wasn’t hours. It was 5 minutes.  
  
  
Ant tucks loose pieces of her silver hair behind her ear, looking over Liam with worried rooted deep in her wide blue eyes as Liam is shaking. Her mouth falls open when she lifts his arms, covering her mouth.  
  
  
“Oh my God,”

  
There’s scratches in sets of three all over his arms. Not deep or very explicit but… these kinds of marks are an omen of demonic attack on humans. People that wake up with random bruises or welts or burns on their skin.  
  
  
It’s a signal of eminent possession prepped on his body.  
  
  
He can see his hands shaking as Ant pulls him away with her, but he can’t feel it. There’s cold sweats staining his shirt and his skin, murk, pale and completely numb, almost blue from the lack of blood circulation, covered in the pulverised ash of the clothes of the dead.

 

He looks dead. And he can’t feel his body at all.  
  
  
Whatever just happened to him is going to take a very long time to wear off. He doesn’t know if he just let himself get compelled or not. He doesn’t feel compelled to do anything… except maybe pass out and cry for a few days.  
  
  
She takes a napkin of the pocket of her short-shorts and damps Liam’s head as she gently guides him back down the hall while holding his hand, carefully taking his phone out of his shaking hands which will leave Harry worried sick about what happened but he told Harry everything he needed to and he can send the audio later. Not now. Right now… the universe is spinning too fast so he really can’t think about anything coherent.  
  
  
She doesn’t ask Liam what’s wrong or what he saw in there. She already knows what’s in that horrible bedroom. Her dad’s aura is all over him. He may not have been in there but someone else was there with Liam and she fears she knows who.  
  
  
She saw Abraxas limp out of the room before she found Liam, the demon of lies and deceit. She already knows what just happened to him.

 

A psychosis inducing staring match when inanimate objects are temporarily given the illusion of being animated, alive and having a soul and mind, as if you’re in a chambre of lies and manipulation.  
  
  
After they get back to her room, she lays him down so he curls up on her bed, staring into space now.

  
  
“Where did he--”  
  
  
Ant shushes her sister, shaking her head.  
  
  
“They’re gone.” Ant tells her sister.

 

“What do you mean they’re gone?!?”

 

“They LEFT. Lux went with them!”

  
  
Their voices drone in the background like static as Liam lays there, ignoring everyone suddenly breaking their acts of being calm and conversational, arguing about what’s going on.

 

Liam’s not in shock despite everything that just happened within the last hour even though it felt like he was sitting there for about 10. But his body acts as if he is.  
  
  
Everyone talks around him, not oblivious to his traumatised state of being but gracious enough to leave him be for now as they have bigger things to worry about. Like where Lux went with Ace and Abraxas, who apparently have all disappeared.  
  
  
Louis stops arguing with them as he looks at Liam for a moment.

 

He hops up with him, making Liam flinch when he lifts Liam’s head ands sits him in his lap as he holds his hand and leans down to his ear.

  
“We’ll talk later, yeah? Outside.” he says quickly.

 

“We can’t leave yet, it’s still outside and it’ll restart all over again.”

 

Liam doesn’t even bother asking him why the fuck didn’t he STOP him. He was scared.  
  
  
Liam sees his head leaning over him to look Liam in the eye upside down, his own blue ones jittery as well.  
  
  
He gets the feeling that Louis might’ve been compelled or attacked today too. But you can’t compel a ghost. He’s got no sensory perception or physical stimuli at all anymore. All that was left in his brain and body. But he’s still conscious. And you can’t compel Liam either because he is lucid and he knows when his goddamn thoughts are lying to him. Most of those weren’t his at all. The one with Zayn was though. He can’t be sure but he’s pretty sure he really did watch Ace compel them.  
  
  
Other than that, everything else was a complete fabrication. He may as well have been sitting in the fucking O.J trial.  
  
  
So maybe you can’t compel a lucid dreamer or a ghost. But you can spook the fuck out of both of them, that’s for damn certain.  
  
  
Liam doesn’t say anything, blinking once, mute. His body needs time to catch up with his mind. He’s overlapping again and his body is tired and drained and he needs rest.

“Where are they?” He finds himself mumbling.

Louis holds his lips in, patting Liam’s arm and continuing to hold his clammy hand as he sits with his head in his lap, watching TV again.

 

“They’ll be back. We just have to wait.” That’s the only answer he can give Liam.

 

Liam’s eyes dart to his phone on the bed, remembering the memo he has to send to Harry.  
  
  
As his fingers wrap around it, he pauses for a few seconds.  
  
  
On one hand, if he unlocks his phone a finds _nothing_ recorded, then that part would’ve all been a hallucination or whatever the fuck as well and Lux wasn’t really being compelled at all. It would mean that Liam really was being attacked and seeing things that weren’t there. Because when Ant’s voice broke the trance, Lux was gone and so was Harry and so was the old man that shares his face.  
  
  
It all would’ve been in his head.  
  
  
On the other hand, if Liam unlocks his phone and finds an audio file with demonic, psychosis inducing chanting inside, then they are on this crashing plane being driven by a suicidal pilot. Because then, _anything_ Zayn and Lux has said to Liam since he got here could have been a lie.  
  
  
This phone is the only solid proof he has that his mind can’t give him.  
  
  
Slowly, he counts to 10 in his head.  
  
  
1… planet, deep below it’s surface. He begins to count things as he turns his phone on, watching the screen light up.  
  
  
It’s now 7:05 p.m.  
  
  
2… lovers…. 3… tattoos…. A cursed flower in love with a dying star. Remember their names.  
  
  
He unlocks it.  
  
  
4… whispers…. 5 multiple personalities…. 6 psychotic delusions…. 7 deadly sins--  
  
  
A text from Harry comes, telling him to send the audio file already.  
  
  
He stops counting as he gasps.  
  
  
The audio is there. And it’s exactly 5 minutes long. And it picked up every last drop of Zayn and Ace’s voices.  
  
  
He stops it before it can get too far in and send him down a rabbit hole of hypnosis again as he drops his phone, squeezing Louis’s cold hand harder as his teeth scrape against his shaking bottom lip.  
  
  
“I wanna go home.” Liam murmurs quietly, holding back the sobs trying to surface.  
  
  
He doesn’t want to cry anymore. He doesn’t want all the answers anymore.  
  
  
He wants his mother.  
  
  
Whenever he had a nightmare as a child, she’d hold him like how Louis is now and tell him it wasn’t real and lull him back to sleep.  
  
  
But apparently, he has to get his stranger dad as well so he doesn’t want that. He can’t really go home if he’s really there right now, realising why Zayn really doesn’t want Liam to go home or away with his dad.

 

 _“... if you seen what I have, you’d die and I can’t let you in everything because it will hurt you too much and I don’t want you to leave here emotionally scarred.’_ _  
_  
  
He knew.  
  
  
And there’s officially no escape now. His emotion can’t be scarred. Because it died.

 

He finally remembers his name.

 

_Geoff._

  
  
  
“You will, Li.” Louis nods as he leans back against the wall, rubbing his thumb over Liam’s hand.

  
  
“You both will.”

  
  
  
Liam closes his eyes to the confused thought of everything as static scrapes around in his skull while he tries to find his sleep, chasing after it until he’s there but it feels like he’s chasing it away from him more than anything else.

  
  
  
Maybe there’s an afterlife you begin anew after death. Maybe there’s not. But at the end of the day when night falls, you start over everyday. Maybe you don’t die everyday but your day comes to an end and you get a new one when you wake up again. Anything could happen in that new day.

  
  
  
When Liam opens his eyes again, this day will be over and he will wake up in a new body and new state of mind. Wherever they go, whether it’s to the moon and never back or every inch of undiscovered land on the surface all over the world, they’re leaving this world one way or another and they’re never coming back here in this life and hopefully not any others ever again.

  
  
They have to find Zayn. But then they have to find Liam too, because if that's his dad, then who and what the fuck is Liam?

 

Maybe he was never his dad. They may have the same face, but the person inside was never really there. And Liam thinks he might be gone already too.


	15. Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam and Zayn get amnesia after falling over the edge of a familiar world. Meanwhile, the kids of Manningtree gear to attend one last raging party.

 

 

 

 

 

Life in Manningtree used to be simple. A real dream.

 

Spare time spent at crazy parties. Football games. Making out with your friends and breaking up for a weekend. Engaging in the general shenanigans as teenagers do.

 

For everyone now, it was a nightmare.

 

Their spare time has become filled with fearing for their lives and staying inside the house now that the woods were once again a place where the young bodies from the children of townsmen and women are desired by monsters that lurked in the dark.

 

Fortunately for Harry and his truant friends, this morbid occurrence made the woods the perfect place to stake out where no one would find them. After Liam was pretty much attacked mid-phone call, it is now that Harry decides that keeping secrets from the rest of the gang at this point is stupid.

 

They need to regroup, reconvene and make sure everyone is still ALIVE before they do anything else. Getting back into contact with the guys on the other side of their world isn’t possible to do alone and he can’t get outside help if they don’t really know what’s going on.

 

Harry isn’t asking anyone to go to hell with him. He’s just asking they help him get back there. Without dying of course.

 

“The waterfall in the marsh drops into Lust like a drain. The water lands on the house which has a massive hole in the ceiling so, we fell straight through the whirlpool to the ground. Almost died.” Harry tells the boys, showing them the passage on the narcissus marsh in the Enchiridion as they all read it. It’s getting pretty dark out so, he’s using a flashlight to keep the page illuminated.

 

Being this deep in the woods, they wouldn’t be able to see two feet in front of them. Being out here in the woods at all is already scary enough, especially after seeing Geoff. Not that he’s a scary guy but… he was a scary guy. Creepy old man walking around in the haunted woods… nothing about that sounds like anything Harry wants to investigate at the moment or bump into if they go in there.

 

Harry was fully convinced that he was dead despite the gossip about his alleged resurrection. Seeing him in the flesh was more than shocking. Like seeing a _ghost_.

 

He continues explaining to everyone how the marsh worked.

 

“Straight up diving into it was pretty risky, not even to mention a freak accident. I don’t want to chance how well I can evade death twice in one day.” He shivers a little at the memories of falling through portals.

 

The ache that pulled on his belly is still there and it feels like it’s never gonna leave.

 

They were happy that he finally explained to them how he survived the car wreck into the ground, equally freaked out that it really did lead to another dimension. Mostly because, the other dimension was the home of the devil.

 

“You think it’s Geoff?”

 

Anthony’s voice next to him break him out of his head.

 

 _“What?”_ Harry looks over at him, as well as Mikey on Anthony’s otherside.

 

“The cannibal.” He elaborates.

 

“There was another missing person’s report last week, remember? Zayn’s in hell, so who else is murdering people?”

 

“That wasn’t even confirmed to be a murder. Why on Earth would you think that?” Ben frowns at him. Anthony shrugs.

 

“Dunno. 1,000 year old fossil, disappears for almost 10 years then, out of _nowhere_ , shows up when half the population of youth is either dying of the fucking bubonic plague or being eaten alive--”

 

 _“Okay, first of all,”_ Ben cuts him off while Harry rolls his eyes at him, shaking his head as he’s looking back over at Mikey, who’s laughing as they start to argue.

 

“Only 3 people have _actually_ been confirmed to be attacked by the cannibal, which we now know was a demon-rapist, creature from hell that’s been sent back to it’s chambers.”

 

If Liam was here to hear Ben talking about Zayn (or even _Lux)_ like that, he’d be unhinging his jaw the same way he did Olly.

 

“One of which was during school hours.” Ben continues. “You don’t think someone would’ve seen an old man walking around on school grounds?”

 

“Valid point but that is still technically possible.” Anthony argues. “Everyone was too busy crying and acting out on angst to notice _anything,_ let alone a kid getting torn apart on the field.”

 

“Okay then, second of all,” Ben continues on more, “He’s been in Wolverhampton. Suspect has an alibi.”

 

 _“_ What a _convenient_ excuse.” Anthony scoffs.

 

“Anyone can make up some bullshit lie about where the fuck they’ve been to place themselves anywhere but at the scene of a crime. Or in this case, multiple crimes. Where’s his witness? What do we even know about him aside from the fact that he’s fucking immortal? How do we know he was in Wolverhampton? As far as we really know right now, Geoff lives in the goddamn woods. What’s he doing in the fucking woods, the very scene of _the first crimes_? Why’s a creepy old man hanging out in the woods at all? Is his name really even Geoff? We have to take this town’s reputation seriously, this shit ain’t folklore anymore.”

 

“Anthony, you’re being ridiculous.”

 

“Guys, seriously. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, way before Zayn went to hell. Just hear me out for a second?”

 

Harry looks back at Anthony with a sigh as he waits for him to go on.

 

He pauses for dramatic effect as he looks back and forth between Ben and Harry for a moment.

 

_“Il Diavolo.”_

 

Ben laughs out loud, really hard and Anthony pushes him in his seat.

 

“The devil?” Harry nods at him. “Did the atheist really just suggest… the devil?”

 

 _“I can’t believe my ears.”_ Ben almost laughs again.

 

“Anthony Mancini believes in the destructive and supernatural entity that is evil? The lying embodiment of all things opposed to God and angels or good and truth?”

 

“Aye, I’m actually going off logic and reason with all the context clues we’ve accumulated here. At this point, I can’t _possibly_ be considered an atheist anymore. God has sent demons to Manningtree on a yacht. I believe in evil more than my own _existence_. I’m practically a Satanist now.” Anthony says seriously.

 

“Clue number 1. The devil shop with all that old shit the satanists family owns which, oh but wait, Liam’s fucking _dad_ is also somehow affiliated with, clue 2. Along with his face on a date that looked like fucking 1655. Keep in mind that the necromancy crisis “ended” in _1644_ . But lets forget the creepy woes of people selling human fucking souls to the devil for immortality and focus on the _actual_ book itself, clue 3” He flips to the front page.

 

“Written by an _unknown man_ that was given to Sophia’s gramps as a guide for witches. Her gramps who was friends with Liam’s dad… or maybe, I dunno, _worked_ for him like the rest of his satanic family? How did Sophia know who Liam was better than Liam knew who Liam was? Better yet, who the fuck IS Sophia’s grandad - clue 99? And oh wow, I wonder who owned the Enchiridion before him with Zayn’s face drawn in it first. All points to--”

 

_“Are you seriously suggesting that Liam’s DAD is the fucking devil??”_

 

_“I’m suggesting that maybe we’re looking in the wrong place here.”_

 

Harry glances at the opening in the woods as they continue to throw out different conspiracy theories.

 

Maybe the _marsh_ is the wrong place for answers _._

 

An idea occurs to Harry now. Someone who knows more about any of this than anyone.

 

He’s at Cocytus.

 

“How’d it get there?” Ben murmurs as he stares at the page, meaning the gateway at the bottom of the marsh.

 

“I don’t really know.” Harry shakes his head. “It’s just a giant mirror. It says the Gods made it.”

 

“Why is it still there?”

 

“Dunno.” Harry shrugs again.

 

“How’s Z gonna get rid of it?”

 

“I _don’t_. KNOW!” Harry yells at them, bombarding him with a million questions he doesn’t have answers to as they all marvel at the book.

 

“He didn’t tell me anything. He won’t even tell _Liam_ anything. To be completely honest with you, I don’t know what Zayn’s plan is. Not at all and neither does Liam. But I don’t think he has any plans on ever coming back, which is probably why he thinks keeping secrets and lying to Liam is helping anyone. Whatever is happening to him with his demons, he doesn’t want our help with. All I’ve _actually_ been told is that he’s closing the portal and Louis said that so, I don’t even know how trustworthy his word is. So stop asking me HOW. Just know he’s already taking care of the demon infestation.”

 

“What about the things that are already walking around in Manningtree?” Anthony says slowly as he’s reading the book.

 

“Like what?” Mikey scratches his head.

 

“Maybe people that are already _possessed?_ ” Ben huffs.

 

“Like Liam’s dad?” Anthony adds for him and everyone rolls their eyes.

 

“Well un-fucking-fortunately, no one is answering the goddamn PHONE so I don’t know what the hell is going on down there anymore!”

 

Ben flips the page and frowns.

 

“Hey, what about this?” He shows it to Harry, the one page in the book that’s been burned too much to read about, right in front of the still-life painting.

 

**Ethereals**

 

Harry tells them he doesn’t know, although, this is a lie.

 

It’s about angels.

 

He hasn’t told them about _Adara_ at all. Mostly because after reading more about stars, Harry doesn’t think Adara is Liam’s past life to be completely honest. Maybe they're connected some kind of way but, it seems highly unlikely that a star can be a human now that he more aware of what they're made of. Sure, he can astral project but, so can monks and tweaked out moshers. Even Harry can do it if he’s high enough.

 

Plus, Liam only _just_ turned 17 not even 2 months ago. This “ethereal” has been gone from its home for 400 years. Unless Liam was just hanging out in fucking out space and just randomly _forgot_ the last 383 years of his existence, there’s no way his timeline matches with hers anyways.

 

He thinks if Liam was really an angel or a star or any other kind of ethereal being, he’d look a little less human.

 

Ethereal beings live on ethereal planes. Not Earth.

 

They turn the page and get to the Vanitas finally and Harry wishes he filmed their _priceless_ reactions.

 

“Oh man, is that it!?”

 

“Looks just like him!”

 

“Holy shit, it looks... real?”

 

“Cause it IS real.”

 

They all gasped in awe, gaping at the image of the familiar young man’s portrait drawn to perfect detail in this 400 year old book.

 

Harry still can’t figure out certain _off_ things about this picture now that he has more vivid idea of what Zayn really looked like in the past.

 

It wasn’t exactly this.

 

The fact that his eyes are still brown in the picture despite Liam saying that the colour in Lux’s eyes is faded like an old man is weird enough. And the weird way he seems to be staring at himself in admiration and reverence rather than disgust like how Zayn glares at his Lux.  

 

Its like he’s looking at God in this picture, a haughty and sublime depiction of vanity.

 

Zayn and Lux are almost unrecognisable.

 

“Lolz look at his reflection.” Anthony snorts as he points at it upside down. Harry glances down at it again.

 

“What about it?”

 

“It’s mockin’ him.”

 

Harry lifts the book and turns it upside down and stares with wide eyes when he sees his reflection isn’t actually lining up with him in the painting.

 

“Whoa...” His eyes dart over the image, back and forth a few times as he flips it.

 

It’s not mocking him. It’s _frowning_ at him.

 

It’d definitely hard to catch but upside down, his expression is slightly skewed. It reminds him of the picture of Dorian Grey. His ugly image reflecting how truly ugly he was inside despite the guy he was depicting being perfectly young forever.

 

This image isn’t ugly in the way that it’s different in the water. Whoever drew it just didn’t bother to actually _flip_ the image so it correctly mirrors each other. His face looks backwards.

 

As a result of the misplaced expression, he’s bearing a subtle smirk of discomfort as his lip is turned on it’s side rather than up. It’s then that Harry thinks this painting might be upside down.

 

“Yeah, that’s _definitely_ them.” Harry nods as he brings it back down, frowning at the strange picture.

 

“God, he’s so fucking sexy. He looks like a _sex God_.”

 

To Harry’s shock, it’s _Ben_ who says this. He looks between him and Anthony but, there’s no reaction at all cause Anthony looks pretty into the picture as well.

 

Harry’s not gonna act like he didn’t notice that Narcissus is practically naked in this drawing save for one lone garment that leaves nothing to the imagination, like most renaissance paintings.

 

This, however, has much more sexual undertones heavily hinted at than you’d usually find in these vanitas, which are supposed to depict death and vanity. Not a sexual advertisement to come fuck him.

 

The sun glistens off his ass like a glazed donut and his legs slightly spread apart doesn’t give you any mental image but the obvious, as if he was giving Adara a visual of the snack she was missing.

 

The way his skin drips with gold and glamour… shit, Harry’s not even fronting. If he accidentally, purposefully sat on his face by mistake, he'd probably wouldn't protest. Even if he wasn’t high during it…

 

He looks very edible. Whoever drew this must’ve been looking at a full-course meal. If this is what _Lux_ looks like, Harry doesn’t want to be challenged with meeting him in person.

 

Everyone looks up at Ben now with identical smirks that make his blush and clear his throat after briefly letting it slip that, given the chance, he’d _totally_ hit it.

 

Harry didn’t even know Ben was into him like that.

 

Understandable. Inappropriate as fuck. But, understandable nonetheless. Zayn doesn’t give a damn about what your sexuality is and it’s clearly written that Narcissus didn’t have any damns to give anyone either, minus the one that sent him to hell.

 

Harry seriously doubts this guy was a virgin.

 

“Anyways, moving on.” Ben forcibly moves along, turning the page away from the picture of Zayn. Harry laughs, shaking his head as he flips _back_ to the painting.

 

“Right, so this is obviously Zayn in a really weird alternate universe that’s gone through centuries of inter-dimensional space travel and, fortunately for us _,_ ended up bringing his fuck up into _our_ world. But I don’t think Liam even knows where he is anymore. He couldn’t even _talk_.” Harry frowns as he rubs his neck, looking down at his phone.

 

Still no replies from Liam.

 

“They might not even be in Lust anymore for all we know. I don’t know how we’re supposed to stay in contact anymore without Liam answering his phone. I don’t have anyone else’s number and opening portals is definitely _not_ something we should try.”

 

This whole thing has only proved to him that his gut was right, like always and they don’t have room for these kind of mistakes. Separating was a bad call and this is a _huge_ testimony of it. He knew it would only take _one_ little mishap, like the single means of communication being lost, for everything to spiral out of control.

 

They’re now scattered and stranded with no one guiding this party boat and no sense of direction as to where they’re going because they have no plan.

 

Contacting _anyone_ in hell right now is impossible.  

 

Harry is about to suggest Cocytus but, Ben beats him to it.

 

“Louis.” Ben says after a moment of brainstorming.

 

“Wow, even I’m not that sick.” Mikey shakes his head next to him in the front seat.

 

“Although…” He retracts this statement as he holds his chin in thought.

 

“I could see him going to hell now that you mention it--”

 

“No, we can _contact_ Louis _.”_ He explains further. “You said he was there too. We don’t need a phone.”

 

“How?” Harry sits up.

 

“Anyone can contact the dead.” Ben gestures to the front of the book now, a wispy image on the front of 3 women dressed in a flowing white dresses in the background of the creatures on the front.

 

“Ghosts?” Harry murmurs.

 

“Hecate, Luna and Persephone.” Ben nods as he names them and point to the one in the middle.

 

_The undead, the moon and the spring._

 

Hecate was the mother of ghosts. Luna was mother of Earth’s waters and the night. And Persephone was the queen of the whole underworld. All of them probably live there.

 

“Crossroads deities. Hecate is the Goddess of ghosts. The crossroads between the living and the dead. Trust me, ghosts are _real_ and they can hear us if you call for them.”

 

After blinking down at the image for a minute, Harry shines the light in Ben’s face.

 

“You mean like…”

 

“A séance?” Anthony finishes.

 

Ben nods after swallowing.

 

“Yeah. Like John Beattie, you know? Sitting in the circle. Hands over each other and sing Kumbaya or something like that.”

 

“We need someone close to Louis for that to work. Zayn’s obviously off the table.”

 

“What about Perrie? Or Eleanor and Cher? They were like besties.”

 

“Yeah. ‘besties’,” Anthony does mocking air quotes.

 

“No… El’s in the hospital. So is Cher, that’d be kind of ridiculous.” Harry shakes his head. “And Perrie’s got _two_ dead lovers. Contacting Jade will waste time and we don’t have much of that to waste. I doubt she’d be down for this. She’s pregnant and emotionally unstable… it’d just be too messy.”

 

“Ouija board?” Mikey suggests.

 

“And a _medium,”_ Anthony shakes his head as he sits up straight. Harry’s brows raise as he’s holding his chin with that thought.

 

A medium would be perfect. Ben looks up at Anthony.

 

“Dude, Louis was one your closest friends. Why don’t _you_ centre it?”

 

“Because there’s too much shit involved with contacting dead people. Anything could go wrong and frankly, I don’t _want_ to talk to Louis.” He admits honestly.

 

“Playing with the spirit world is dangerous and we’re _amateurs_ . We could be pulling anything out of there if we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing. I’m not trying to conjure more _demons.”_

 

“Louis’s not even a ghost… he was an apparition.”

 

“What’s the difference?” Mikey deadpans.

 

“A ghost is something that’s dead that doesn’t know it’s dead. An apparition is something that’s dead that looks _alive._ Louis isn’t in the spirit world. He’s walking around in Zayn’s HOUSE like a real live person. If we call him, nothing is coming out but _him_.”

 

“Okay genius,” Anthony nods along with his arms crossed. “Since you know every fucking thing, how the fuck do you expect 3 assholes with shit for brains to conduct a seance?”

 

“3?” Ben’s brows raise.

 

“Yeah. _3._ I’m not doing that shit. _”_

 

Harry isn't going to force Anthony to do anything. He understands. He doesn't want to do this either but, someone has to and he really wasn’t that close to Louis.

 

“I think… I know a medium in town.” Harry says slowly as he looks up at them again.

 

“ _Necromancer_ , actually. Which is even better.”

 

Ben instantly shakes his head as he shoots down the idea before Harry even fully suggests it.

 

“Going to Sophia the teenaged _bitch_ for help is cavorting with the ones we’re running _away_ here, which is a disaster in the making. The second she slithered into town, the universe lost it’s shit. We’re lucky she hasn’t come after us for her _laptop_.”

 

“Not _Sophia_. Are you out of your mind?”

 

Harry looks at Ben like he’s out of his mind.

 

“I know _another_ witch. His name’s Johnny. He’s like, a few minutes away from here.”

 

“Johnny Miller?”

 

Everyone looks at Mikey in the front seat now.

 

“Don’t tell me...” Harry smiles wide.

 

“Dopey lad from Bromley?”

 

“YOU KNOW HIM?” Harry nods as Mikey laughs.

 

He doesn’t know why this thought pleases him.

 

“Went to Greenwich for awhile. Dated my roomie. We used to hang out. He dropped out a few months ago cause he said he had some work to do here for his grandad for the end of the harvest season or some shit.”

 

“What kind of work?” Harry frowns now.

 

He suddenly remembers that the guy is related to Sophia so his prospects on being helpful are just a great as hers. Whatever “work” he came here to do sounds like an even bigger disaster to go back to him for anything.

 

But then again, he did give Harry half his grandad’s belongings for cash… maybe another favour wouldn’t be that big of a deal.

 

“Zookeeping or something?” Mikey guesses, “He’s cool. He’d totally conduct a séance for you, he’s really into the occult and shit.”

 

Mikey takes out his phone and begins to make a call.

 

“Works for me.” Ben shrugs as Mikey starts the car after he and Anthony switch spots before they can thoroughly discuss this any further as Harry frowns out the window.

 

_“Zoo keeping…?”_

 

“Yeah. I think they harvest food for his farm or something.”

 

“What kind of animals could he be “keeping” in Manningtree? This isn’t the countryside.”

 

Unless they’re talking about the chavs on south end of Essex, the only animals here are the squirrels running around in the park.

 

The use of the word “keeper” sticks out in his mind as he thinks about the not so coincidental fact that the keeper of _demons_ is the actual devil, who Sophia’s exchange favours and work for.

 

He thinks about the picture of Liam’s teenaged dad at the Miller’s place again, dressed in hunting gear. His thoughts churn as he feels like he’s trying to connect things that feel like should be obvious.

 

Immortality… young bodies… the harvest season…

 

The keeper can’t get around without a body to live in, just like all demons. Even Avaritia hoarded them since he has to body jump every century as eventually, humans die and there’s no way to stop their bodies from aging.

 

If the body they’re in dies, the demon dies.

 

Harry begins to wonder if Anthony was actually onto something. They can’t rule off Liam’s dad being possessed. His behaviour in the past doesn’t exactly scream “human being”.

 

Only for a moment, he can’t think of why on Earth anyone would come for Liam? Then he remembers.

 

The best way to get to Zayn was to start with Liam first.

 

In fact, people usually go for Liam _specifically_ so they can reach Zayn, like a stepping stone.

 

Then it dawns on Harry finally why the devil might use Liam’s connection to Zayn. If Liam’s dad _really_ has anything to do with this, then that makes him just as old as _Zayn_. Except for one difference: Zayn’s never gonna die.

 

“Oh… my… God…” Harry springs up as he finally realises the obsession with Zayn’s body.

 

He didn’t purge his demons from his body for immortality. He was cursed to reflect on the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death. _Forever_.

 

He already had immortality.

 

He purged his demons to get out of _hell_ . Harry thinks he understands why now as he fully realises that his demons are liars and he is an _idiot_.

 

“What’s wrong?” Mikey stops the car.

 

“Zayn’s immortal, they don’t want _Liam_ , they want ZAYN’S BODY!”

 

“Who?!?”

 

“EVERY DEMON IN HELL!”

 

Harry’s gonna be sick all over again. If Zayn goes down, they _all go down._

 

The _devil_ will be immortal. This plan for world domination will be in full-motion. The portal will definitely be used for jail-break.

 

Not even the Gods will be safe if all of hell breaks loose out of the underworld. Every star in the sky. All of the aether in the universe will be _drained_ into a black hole.

 

He already didn’t think they should've been trusting Lux in the first place but, this has only solidified that all of this started with him. If anyone wants Zayn’s body the most, it’s the very ones that were purged from it. That’s the part of the story no one tells since Lux and the rest of Zayn’s demons are probably the only ones that actually know it, including the only other ones who really know what happened when he died trying close the portal the first time.

 

Before he went to hell, no one wanted Narcissus more than his reflection.

 

Harry already knows Lux is a liar and he’s already seduced Liam enough that he’ll probably never turn against him. But Harry can see clear as day what Zayn’s biggest problem is right now the same as Nars was.

 

The same demon that cursed him, landed him in hell and killed him the _first_ time.

 

Harry wouldn’t be shocked if those fucking demons killed Narcissus themselves. It’s easy to take advantage of the fact that he doesn’t remember. And Lux just brought him _right_ back “home” like a good little subservient demon.

 

Before they can fully get the car into first gear, sirens wail behind them twice as light flickers, lighting up the trees around them and they all groan.

 

“Oh _no…”_

 

Unfortunately, they didn’t consider that the police might also be out and patrolling the woods too.

 

Getting arrested would only be the most inconvenient thing to happen to them within the last hour probably. The questioning of what the hell they’re doing here is going to be hard for them to answer.

 

That is _just_ within the last hour. With the chaotic Mikey, a hippie and two runaways hanging out in the woods… there was no way they weren’t getting arrested after they show their suspended and/or non-driver ID’s. They might as well have had “please arrest us” painted across their windows.

 

Harry is sure worse things are waiting to happen nearby because this was a typical day in Manningtree which meant the devil was closing in on their tails soon anyways and this was just the end of a very _endless_ day.

 

“Is that… _Johnny?”_ Mikey squints at the rearview mirror.

 

“Damn that was _quick.”_ He laughs as he closes his phone as rolls down his window.

 

“ _Yo JOHNNY!”_

 

Harry and the boys turn in their seats, looking at the car pulling up behind them. A kid with frizzy hair jumps out of the car.

 

It’s not a cop car, it’s a _party bus._

 

 _“MIKEY!”_ He yells with his hands in the air, holding a bunch of flyers. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

 

That was a great question they should be asking _him._

 

“What the _fuck_ is going on _…_ ”

 

“Mikey’s addict friends--”

 

“Hey, Gautama Buddha,” Anthony thumps Harry. “This is the part in the plot where you use your fake hippie powers to ask the universe to stop fucking with us.”

 

“Jesus, Mary and fucking Joseph, what’s next?” Harry groans, hitting his head on the back of the seat as Mikey and Johnny catch up.

 

Apparently, he was just on his way back to Cocytus after putting up all the flyers all over town.

 

As if God hears Harry’s call, he gets a text then. His eyes open immediately when he sees his phone lit up with a reply from Liam, quickly opening it.

 

“Just add Lucifer and the gang’s all here.” Ben answers for him.

 

**Haz it’s Louis. You have to come get Liam NOW**

 

Harry types back a furious reply.

 

**H: What the fuck happened??**

 

**L: Zayn and Lux got arrested and they’re being sent to Purgatory. There are GODS purging Lux RIGHT NOW. Liam won’t wake up. JUST GET HIM OUT OF HERE. YOU HAVE TO TAKE HIS BODY WITH YOU BEFORE THEY COME BACK**

 

**H: WHAT ABOUT ZAYN?**

 

**L: HE’S SELLING HIS SOUL TO THE DEVIL THE CHANCES OF HIM COMING BACK TO EARTH ARE ZERO**

 

Harry rubs over his face in distress. That’s exactly what they _want_ Zayn to do.

 

Zayn’s body is under spectacular siege for the inside out. As soon as Lux is pushed out and mortified, _anyone_ can just move right in his place.

 

Although this all seems like it’s crashing and burning, something deep inside Harry tells him Zayn might know what he’s doing. That was a weird thing about him. He had a lot of secrets, but Harry knows Zayn isn’t stupid. He always has a plan. He seriously doesn’t see him selling his actual soul to anyone seeing that he’s fucking cursed with it.

 

He _can’t_ sell his soul. There’s a chain on it.

 

This has all happened to him already before. Even if he claims not to remember, Narcissus didn’t trust his demons for a _reason_ and Harry thinks Zayn probably knows why they want his body.

 

But the bad thing about that is, his plans usually fail.

 

“Guys,” Harry closes his eyes.

 

“You have to take me back to hell.”

 

“Why?”

 

Harry explains everything to them now.

 

Little did they know, Zayn _did_ have a plan. He wasn’t selling anything to anyone. He was already on his way to Purgatory to make a deal with an old friend. And he wasn’t alone in this. Not by a long shot.

 

You can’t get Zayn without his other half.

 

There was a rave happening there. And all of Manningtree were going whether they knew it or not.

 

It all begins when Johnny gives them an invitation to the hottest rave in hell. Manningtree was about to burn another party down.

 

An invitation to an upcoming High Tide gig.

 

 

 

 

*

 

***meanwhile, in another dimension***

 

After falling through a void, a sharp gasp snaps out of Liam, opening his eyes and finding himself outside after going to sleep.

 

It feels as though he’s been thrown into a dream. Which means he’s lucid again. He knew he hadn’t been sleeping well so, at least he’ll be well rested now.

 

At first, the light outside is too blinding. The sky hurts to look at. He has to squint with his eyes almost closed when his head throbs. He’s lying back on the ground against a grassy hill that’s pressed against a wide blue sky, full of the clouds that just birthed him.

 

That sleep sure didn’t do shit for him. He wakes up exhausted, like he’s tried to make up years of insomnia with 5 minutes of sleep. The deprivation is so strong, even exercising his brain is tiring as it continues to throb in his skull.

 

He sits up with a groan as he holds his head with one hand, squeezing his eyes with his fingers pressed under his glasses as if his fingers are a substantial palliative for the massive gongs throbbing in his head. His skull feels foreign, like he’s wearing someone else’s framework of bones that don’t match his own, someone else’s skull sitting heavy in between his shoulders, the resounding migraine a result of this botched operation.

 

It all feels too small for him. Like he’s been squeezed back into a child’s body he’s outgrown.

 

He is burnt _out_ , wondering if he’s coming down off a raging party that went on for 48 hours straight. Or a hangover from some heavy narcotics that had to have been issued by either MI5 or the damn Roman Catholic Church from how much of his memory is fucked from what happened to him, like he’s been drugged. The last several hours are still in that black hole.

 

Maybe the last few _days_ , which terrifies him because he knows with the situation he’s in, time is of the essence and wasting it is just _asking_ for death to charge at him faster.

 

He looks around now to place where he is, dazed and confused. It appears to be the tallest hill on Earth and he’s completely alone.

 

Before he even has a chance to get his bearings straight, a shiny flying object falls from the sky right in his face soon after he looks up, hitting him directly between the eyes _,_ stunning him as his head knocks back to the ground, grasping his face with both hands.

 

“OW!”

 

The stun that ricochets through his head doesn’t actually hurt. But that was _really_ rude. When he opens his eyes again, his glasses are cracked in the middle.

 

It takes a moment for him to adjust to the explosion of stars in his eye, blinding him all over again as he pushes himself to sit up and rub over his face, taking his dumb glasses off and tossing them aside.

 

When everything finally stops spinning out of control, he looks beside him and sees that it was just a glass bottle holding something shimmery inside. Apparently, it's raining glass. At least it didn't shatter in his face. He’s surprised it didn’t permanently blind him. The Gods clearly hate their damned guts.

 

It seems to be iridescent water. Shades of pink, transparent like rosé inside that has a prism of different shades from different angles when it moves.

 

As the wind blows around him when he picks it up, it’s not cold to the touch like he thought it’d be. Its slightly warm but not in a way it’s emitting on it’s own. It’s the kind of warmth that you’d feel on your skin after sitting in sunlight all day. It feels familiar, gentle on his skin when he touches it again, turning it over to read the label.

 

**aisenmA fo elttoB**

 

Below the bolded line are more smaller words written in bright red.

 

**_CAUTIO:_ **

**_Caecitas_ **

**_Corporis labe_ **

**_Mutatio autem spiritu_ **

**_Spiritu ignuis_ **

**_Obliuionem_ **

**_Dolor_ **

**_MORTEM PERMANENT EGO_ **

 

Apparently, he doesn’t know how to read anymore as he has no idea what it even says. The words look like they’ve been rearranged, out of order or flipped backwards in his eyes, as if he has to hold it up to a mirror to see what it says but, he can't even do that cause he's staying far away from mirrors because they’re evil objects.

 

He thinks he heard once that you can’t read in a dream.

 

There’s a note attached to it,

 

_Heads up, rock star. You left something. Just reminding you guys. Whatever you do, DON’T. RAISE. CHAOS. She sleeps like a rock. But don’t take no for an answer from my brother. Just be careful in Purgatory. Get to the other side of the mountain as fast as you can without causing a scene and you’ll be fine. You’re from the city. Show them who you are and keep moving forward. Good luck kid. Don’t be a stranger. You can come by anytime, I’m always around x_

 

                                                                                      -  _ _Ύπνος__

 

 

_“Hypnos?”_

 

He doesn’t know who Hypnos is.

 

Liam reads and understands the note attached to the neck of the bottle in his head with fluent comprehension although this _definitely_ isn’t in written in English. Hypnos’s penmanship is _divine_ , perfect calligraphy across the note like a note from God _._

 

He can’t read actual English but, he can read _this?_

 

Even though he manages to know the name Hypnos means ‘sleep’ along with the rest of the message in the same language, it still registers as gibberish in his head as there’s no context for what this note is pertaining to.

 

Getting a message from _sleep_ sounds kind of funny since he’s in a dream.

 

_You’re from the city._

 

The words jump around in his head, looking for meaning.

 

_“What city?”_

 

Who the hell is his brother? What’s Purgatory?

 

 _“What in the world,”_ Liam shakes his head with distressed brows as he looks around to see if there’s anything else around here that might be more helpful than this.

 

He can’t remember shit.

 

Like always, he can’t see his face clearly in the glass. He can never see his reflection clearly when he leaves his body. Almost as if he doesn’t really have one. It’s too shimmery against the surface but, he likes how anonymous he is. Too transparent to be caught by even his own reflection.  

 

There could be a message from the Gods inside. He looks up at the sky it fell from curiously, the very sky he’s sure _he_ just fell from. The clouds close up quickly, like a zipper as they move together and get back into position right before his eyes.

 

For a moment, he contemplates if this is Alice in Wonderland and debates if he should drink the strange substance presented to him that will lead to his next task. It seems like the obvious thing to do although, this note from Hypnos doesn’t instruct him to do so.

 

The part of the label he can’t read could say _drink me._ But then again, it could also say _this is_ _poison_. By that logic, he decides against drinking it, bested by the ominous drink’s anonymity outdoing his own. He knows enough about himself to know that he isn’t immortal.

 

He takes off the note and tosses the bottle over the hill to get rid of it and watches it rolling down until it disappears in the tall grass, folding the note up and putting it in his pocket.

 

After reading it 10 times over, the same blank thought occurs to him.

 

He still has no idea what the hell he’s doing here. Some helpful note.

 

He squeezes his eyes closed again to think, carefully searching for something useful from his brain. He mostly gets trivial stuff.

 

He can remember general things. How to take a walk or leave his throbbing bones behind. How to speak. How to count to a million. How to ride a bike. Cook a meal. Random stuff that are totally useless right now. But he can’t remember _vital_ things.

 

His full name. Where he’s from. His age. Is he even a boy? Even what he _looks_ like. It’s all gone.

 

It’s like he’s purged all his memory and been reborn as no one.

 

He decides he’d do better to stop thinking about it. It’s seriously wearing him out. He can also remember that he has a history with amnesia and that this feeling isn’t new at all. If it’s important, it’ll come to him again. Identity is obviously a myth in this universe.

 

The birds chirp happily and the breeze splashes over his cheeks, carrying the scent of pine and wood, that nostalgic smell surrounding him once again. Church bells ring out in the distance.

 

This isn’t a city. So this isn’t where he’s from. This is a very small town and his home is here. He doesn’t think home is always a place. It could be a person too. Wherever his heart is.

 

The clouds above were a flourish of fluffy white pillows, moving across the sky like contented kites. Down below the hill, he holds his hand over his brows to shield his eyes from the sunlight as he squints to find the bottle again. He can see it glowing in the grass. And he sees the woods. The sun is still up, above the thousands of trees that gave this place it’s name.

 

 _Manningtree_.

 

It finally comes to him with ease.

 

He never acknowledged until now that he wasn’t really from this burgh. He can’t remember where he came from. Somewhere above here, in the clouds.

 

It’s the beginning stages of pre-dusk when the sky is slowly changing from blue to gold on one end. It’ll be disappearing below the horizon in a couple hours. But time doesn’t exactly behave in a logical way in a dream so, who knows how long the sunset will last today.

 

The church bells say it’s afternoon but the sky says time isn’t real.

 

The light glistens over the surface of lake Logea in front of the woods, shimmery white gold down across the bay like the lake is covered with twinkling stars sprinkled all over the surface.

 

He lets his hand drop into his lap now and takes in his surroundings, all the vibrant wildflowers surround him in the miles of empty land he has. It looks like he’s actually sitting over the edge of world. He wonders where dreams actually take place if it’s not really Earth. Where does reality end?

 

Dreams like this are always so beautifully vivid, not just in appearance but the entire atmosphere of it. When he knows he’s dreaming, he can touch anything and feel it on his skin. Even the clouds.

 

 _Everything_ around him becomes palpable.

 

The wind blowing across the blades of grass, tickling his palm, can be held in his hand like wisps of hair. The sound of the buzzing mayflies can be felt on his tongue like tasting sprinkles of rain, something darker clouds in the distance indicate might be nearby too. That was okay. He might not remember much but, he remembers he loves the rain. It gives him pleasant memories.

 

Hiding with Zayn under blankets.

 

He smiles as he moves his fingers through the grass, looking for something else that might give him more of his memory back as he watches the airflow around them, resembling vapour-like water running down the hill.

 

Even the air becomes physical here. He could get up, step on the clouds in the air and _fly_ right now if he wanted. He always thought he could as a kid. Be like superman and fly around in the sky.

 

Looking at it all now makes him miss how wild his imagination used to be. Not that he really changed _that_ much.

 

This was around the time when no one knew he could part with his body. Not even his mother. Back then, he only did it outside where he could daydream about touching the sky. The best place in town to touch the sky from was this hill.

 

He remembers being a kid and daydreaming about living above the clouds on the porch of his house. Some days, he’d be running to the top of this hill as if it would lead up there. He remembers feeling so happy that he’d just conquered the whole world. His perception of everything was so different back then but, he supposes it’s like that for all children.

 

This hill looked like a mountain.

 

It’s like kids were always hallucinating, out of touch with reality and living in a world that wasn’t real.

 

He spent most of his life like that. His world _wasn’t_ real.

 

It’s funny being here again in a dream.

 

Everything he sees now is exactly how he remembers seeing it as a kid, as if he’s looking through the eyes of an adolescent child again. Everything bigger than what it actually is, important things he should be worried about, gone. Just sitting on top of the whole world, above every cloud in the sky like he hasn’t got a single problem in life.

 

All he could think about was how he’d ran all over this hill for years and never realised he was almost touching heaven.

 

He thinks Harry called this an astral plane. This dream state of being he could travel into. He’d get to the top some days and spin around in a circle until he felt completely lost in space, even without Zayn and Harry doing it along with him.

 

Being indwelled with his body wasn’t natural to him. He’s never had a great connection to his sense of self so, being dizzy never felt weird - something he’s always been told was common with personality disorders. Having a distorted connection to your body and appearance.

 

But, he knew his self-image issues went deeper than that. With his childhood trauma he kept suppressed in a vault, he doesn’t think his face would’ve ever looked like it belonged to him nor would he have liked looking at mirrors for the same reason why he thrusted out of himself so often.

 

This detachment thing wasn’t just something he was born with. It got psychological because of how emotionally withdrawn he was from his parents. He got a _lot_ of things from his father. His personality. His face.

 

Liam was his spit.

 

There was just something about _being_ Geoff that made him want to escape, like trying to get out of his shadow. He belonged to him, and nothing would ever change that.

 

Since he could never change who he was, escaping from his body was the next best thing.

 

It was a game to him, to throw himself up into the sky as far away from himself as he could before landing in his body again, crashed back into the grass. He stopped doing it after he became afraid of heights.

 

He never knew what he was reaching for out there, up in the clouds.

 

It was somewhere he’d been before he never could find. Something he’d permanently forgotten but, it never forgot _him._ Whatever was pulling him back out there, he supposes with his fucked up memory, he’ll probably never know.

 

He can’t believe he suppressed all this. His childhood really was something that seemed to have never happened. But now, he’s here again. It wasn't _all_ traumatic.

 

It was like there was a vacuum inside him, buried in his chest somewhere that cleaned up the mess that was his past. Only, it didn’t know where to start so, it just sucked everything about him into the vault. Even the good stuff.

 

He begins to remember this day in eloquent detail as he settles into himself comfortably.

 

He was full of youth and covered in sweat that he wore like dew on a chilled glass, taking a nap on a warm summer day and letting the last offerings of sunlight crawl down his tanned skin after running up the tallest hill in Manningtree. He can hear the church bells echoing into silence now, signalling the end of the day.

 

He wasn’t alone today. He’d just won the race against his best friends.

 

Z and Harry were probably down there somewhere at the bottom of the hill, left behind in Liam’s dust like the slow pokes they were, still trying to catch up. Instead of sleeping as he waits, Liam looks at the sun gradually setting through the trees down below.

 

He waits for Zayn with the sounds of Earth humming to sleep as the sun fades slowly in the background. Zayn always came in second.

 

He was probably the one exception to Liam’s vacuum-like amnesia he’d never forget one detail about. Liam could run through a burning house and almost die and forget it all happened the next day but, he’d never forget Zayn. The actual devil could wear his father’s body like a coat and attempt eviscerate him through his flesh while throwing him into a fit of insanity and he’d still only remember Zayn. This vacuum was really particular.

 

The exhaustion of running a marathon today is tugging at his lungs as his asthma keeps his breath slightly short with each huff and his eyelids weigh down to put him under, into a nap. But he refrains from leaving. Something tells him going back to sleep right now is a bad idea. He doesn’t even remember going to sleep but, he doesn’t want to go back. He knows if he does, he’ll be thrown back into his body.

 

He's not ready to wake up yet.

 

Going back now would be counter productive anyways. He doesn’t know where the hell his body even is right now but, he knows he came here for reason. He was waiting for someone.

 

The answer lies on the tip of his tongue from a conversation he had about coming here echoing in the distance of his memory.

 

He takes out the note and reads it again.

 

“Be careful in… _Purgatory_.”

 

 _‘He’s innocent, kid. Don’t forget that.’_ A sleepy, young voice echoes in his head without a face.

 

Hypnos didn’t sound much older than a lazy guy in his early 20s but, Liam knows he’s _much_ older than he seemed. Older than time itself. He told Liam that time was literally his younger brother.

 

 _‘How do you know?’_ Liam remembers himself asking.

 

_‘Because you told me, Liam. And I believe you. They will too.’_

 

He was talking about Zayn. He holds the memory for a moment as it slowly pieces together.

 

Someone got Zayn arrested…  and now he’s going back to Purgatory.

 

It seems like all of this has happened before. Hypnos _clearly_ knew Liam and had the exact same conversation once before even though Liam can’t even remember what he looks like.

 

He waits for something else to come up but, that’s all he gets.

 

It dawns on him that no one actually ever _remembers_ going to sleep. Maybe they get figments from a dream but, sleep was always followed by amnesia.

 

Maybe the rest will come to him later. For now, he relaxes, leaning down on his back and cupping his hands over his belly as he watches the sunlight glistening against the lake. He knows Zayn will be here soon. They came here together. Liam was just faster than him.

 

Through the trees, the light shines with rays of gold. It's casting shadows forward so they slice through the woods like a maze of lasers. As if this maze leads to another world on the other side of the sun. A world that’s too bright to see into, the sun being the secret doorway to some another dimension that leads to another corner of space.

 

He briefly entertains the idea that maybe he came here because he was supposed to journey into it like the rest of the idiots who died trying. He’s heard so many stories about the sun.

 

Everyone that’s got too close have all been burned and struck down. Liam doesn’t think he’d burn.

 

Harry said something about the horizon being a portal into another dimension didn’t he?

 

He shakes his head with a snort at the ridiculous thought of Harry’s alien ideas. Even if he thinks it’s silly, he stares down at the horizon and looks for a doorway anyhow.

 

There’s a strange haze in the woods that looks odd and out of place here. As if there might’ve been a forest fire this morning that’s left behind smoke and ash in the air. The haze obscures the woods so all he can see is smoking light and bugs flying in and out of it.

 

It’s _so_ bright. He knows staring at the sun like this is bad for his sight but he _finally_ figured out how to see through light in his eyes without needing the help of his glasses. It’s actually quite simple. Like looking into the barrel of a flashlight.

 

At first glance, it’s blinding. But if he looks long enough, he can see through on the other side of the light, where everything is illuminated clearly.

 

As he looks at the horizon now, the ring around the sun _does_ sort of look like a bridge of light. But, a bridge to where? He’s already on an astral plane. What’s beyond here to cross over into? The next level of space?

 

He thinks if he looks long enough, maybe he’ll see what’s on the other side.

 

Something moves in the light through the trees. It makes Liam squint even more as he sits up again slowly, resting his arms over his knees. As he waits patiently for something to happen, he sees a shadow pass by. His eyes grow wide.

 

There’s something out there in the woods. Maybe it’s just a mirage. But the mirage doesn’t explain away the feeling of being… _watched_.

 

He ignores the creepy feeling, occupying his mind with trying to see past the sun, although something is telling him to get up and run away right now. That what’s lurking in the woods _wants_ something.

 

He stays and waits for Zayn. He’s not leaving here without him and he knows he’s going to be here any minute now.

 

Staring at the sun like this makes him imagine himself as a beautiful boy who spent all his time doing exactly this. A boy from this same town. Maybe even from the same hill. Staring up there from Earth like he’s waiting for it to reveal all it’s secrets.

 

Maybe that boy wasn’t staring at the sun at all. Maybe it was just a metaphor for that thing everyone’s searching for in life. Meaning and purpose. Answers to every question that could possibly be asked.

 

There was probably nothing up there. Liam can’t see anything. He doesn’t think he really needs an answer anymore. Even if he feels like he’s being watched, he’s content with where he is right now. It doesn’t feel threatening.

 

Whoevers watching doesn’t want him.

 

Trying to figure out what’s the big deal with the sun everyone is so obsessed with is quite boring. His short attention span to it all _really_ makes him feel like a child again as he gets distracted by a purple butterfly next to him that lands on his glasses.

 

[ Boredom ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxlBOBOZHqI)

 

He offers his finger down to him, careful not to scare him away.

 

The butterfly flaps his majestic wings and perches on Liam’s finger so he can bring it up to his face and see him closer.

 

 _“Hi there.”_ He smiles.

 

He’s got splashes of tiny white specs across his wings like he’s holding a fleet of stars on his back, iridescent shades of purple and deep blue, almost black around them that change in the light like scales that resemble a night sky. His little legs crawl onto Liam’s nose and sit there, right on his face. He’s careful when he snorts, watching it move on his nose ticklishly.

 

 _“What do you think he was looking at up there, huh?”_ Liam asks him quietly as his wings beat to a gentle stop.

 

Instead of answering, the butterfly flutters away into the air.

 

As if to point out the sky to Liam again, his eyes go back to the sun as he blinks a few times. The stars on the butterflies back burst behind his eyelids. The kind that you see after staring at the sun for too long.

 

It occurs to him then what’s up there now. He can suddenly see them.

 

There’s _stars_ on the other side of the sun, hiding in plain sight.

 

Of course there’s stars in the sky, they’re _always_ there but… you don’t normally notice them there in the daytime. Now that his attention has been drawn to it, Liam can _see_ them.

 

They’re so beautifully out of place. And there’s _thousands._ A whole universe of endless stars like a city of ethereal angels.

 

_“Wow…”_

 

That might not be heaven. But it’s somewhere he’d love to see closer.

 

He reaches his hand up to block out the sun so he can focus on the little twinkling dots that made up outer space. It’s then Liam knows for sure that the sky isn’t really blue at all. The sunlight creates an illusion when light scatters in the eye, makes everyone see blue.

 

Without the sun in Liam’s eyes, he can see the whole universe for what it really is. The sky is black.

 

His eyes gravitate to one line of stars in particular. He can’t recognise the shape, as if he hadn’t been taught this in school before. It feels like he’s found the source of where he’s being _watched_ from.

 

Something out there that he can’t see. It almost makes him sad.

 

After a while, it begins to look totally unrecognisable to the point where he’s not even looking at stars anymore.

 

There’s an empty space.

 

This familiar feeling gives him the creeps. Like when he looks in a mirror and somehow doesn’t see anyone there.

 

Something’s _missing_ up there.

 

“What… _is that?”_ Liam murmurs.

 

“Her face.”

 

Time rushes back to Liam as he’s suddenly not alone on the hill anymore.

 

He jumps, startled as he snaps out of his thought and lets his eyes focus on his best friend’s silhouette jogging towards him.

 

Despite staring directly into the sun for probably over 5 to 10 minutes there, he sees through the blinding light in his eyes almost too easy, not even a second thought to it now.

 

Liam felt like he was on a brink to figuring something out just then but, all his attention has been directed elsewhere as he forgets about the sky entirely, even though an pulse inside him beckons for him to keep looking. He looks to Zayn instead with a wide smile.

 

Zayn’s shadow is projected forward in the haze surrounding him like he’d just jogged here from heaven, wheezing and exaggeratedly flinging his arms back and forth as he moves like his joints are about to fall apart after finally getting to the top of the hill.

 

He collapses on top of Liam, throwing his body over him as he tackles Liam to the ground with a wild belly flop. Liam is too stunned to laugh with him after he answered Liam’s question.

 

 _“You… prick,”_ He pants, pushing Liam with a laugh as he sits up.

 

Liam stays back on the side of his elbow with wide eyes as Zayn leans back on his hands, turned towards the sun with his chest still rising and falling with every dragged out breath.

 

 _“Why… do you always… run…. ahead of meh?”_ He shakes his head with a smile outlined on his profile, squinting at the sun.

 

What Liam thinks he means to say is why doesn’t he let him win this time.

 

“You should really go for football, Li.”

 

“Yeah?” Liam smiles. Zayn nods.

 

Liam doubted he’d ever make a football team. With his asthma, he’d probably go into cardiac arrest on the field. How humiliating would it be to die in front of everyone? They’d probably all start cheering. Not even to mention the _beams_ shining of the field that would blind him. It’d be like a circus show of him having a seizure with a live audience.

 

“Shut the fuck up Liam.” Zayn laughs really hard when Liam says all that, nudging the side of his waist so Liam squirms.

 

Liam wasn’t entirely joking with most of that but, he laughs anyways.

 

He always wondered if Zayn genuinely thought his self-depreciation was hilarious to laugh at or if he only laughed so Liam would laugh off things he couldn't change about himself too.

 

As Zayn looks towards the lake and the woods down below, the sun begins to set and turn the whole sky gold now, dust particles and mayflies he kicked up from the wild grass, floating around his head in the light like he’s got a halo, dust particles falling off his lashes as he blinks.

 

Liam’s thought this a million times and he’ll say it a million more.

 

He’s _so_ beautiful. Like an angel.

 

“What did you mean by her face?” Liam repeats, sitting up and leaning on his knees, into a fetal position now.

 

Zayn slouches back into his shoulders.

 

Forever terrible posture.

 

He went on to tell Liam that it was the sun’s face. The big star they see in their eyelids when they blink after staring for too long. Liam wouldn’t say it looked like a “star”. More like a giant ink blotch of a white void.

 

Zayn tells him that’s because the sun’s face was too bright to see, so they go blind and see nothing.

 

He supposed that was one say of saying they were damaging their retinas.

 

It suddenly occurs to Liam that Zayn was just describing a dream he had. This whole story he always told Liam about the sun has a whole other meaning to him now. It wasn’t something Zayn just made up.

 

He wasn’t talking about the sun’s face. Not entirely. He was talking about a _star._

 

He told Liam that while the moon lived in a world was full of dreams and called the night, the sun’s world was called the day and full of light.

 

Her eyes were always open in the daytime, shining light through them. She was so ethereal, she blinded everyone that looked her way. So they all turned away and looked straight through her. She wasn’t invisible… everyone else was just too blind to see. All except for her moon. The sun only closed her eyes so the moon could come out too. So they’d be up there on top of the world together where there wasn’t any noise. Like how Liam and Zayn were right now.

 

It was a pretty detailed story to make-up on the spot like that, now that Liam thinks about it after hearing Zayn say it all over again.

 

Zayn figured that meant the sun and moon were he and Liam. They were always in love with each other.

 

“We’re ancient lesbians, bean.”

 

Liam laughed with him as Zayn bumped his shoulder, leaning against Liam’s side as he watched the sunset.

 

These days always felt the same. Pleasantly everlasting. He’d never felt more calm.

 

Zayn as a child was always a wise and enchanting anomaly to Liam. He wasn’t like the average person. Not like anyone Liam knew and he knew there’d never be anyone else like him.

 

“You know, I could listen to you talk for hours.” Liam says after a short pause. Zayn snorts against him, shaking Liam’s knee.

 

 _“Sure you can.”_ He says sarcastically, but Liam was serious.

 

He loved when Zayn shared stories he inserted them into. He loved everything about this.

 

Zayn was sometimes so poetic with his words for someone so young. His mind didn’t come from someone his age. He didn’t so much remind Liam of someone older but rather someone who experienced feelings way beyond his years. Like that was Zayn's thing he couldn't change. His vibrant mind. Even when he got a rare glimpse into his eyes, Liam could sometimes see him gazing into a whole other _world_.

 

He remembers wondering where Zayn got his mind from. That crazy, chaotic world he lived in. He was always happy to hear more about it.

 

The moon stared at the sun for so long, she forgot her own name. But she never got sick of staring at her. She liked looking at the sun. They kissed for hours, so much so, the moon even turned as shade of yellow some nights from being sun kissed all day.

 

He finally has somewhat of a better understanding of Zayn.

 

Why he always loved kissing so much. Why it all reminded him of he and Liam.

 

All the things he saw in his mind. Liam really wishes he could see what Zayn saw up there.

 

Now, Liam has his own pleasant memories blossoming inside of sitting on the edge of this hill right where they are now and making one kiss last for hours.

 

“I see her face and I think of you.”

 

“I think I can see it.” Liam tilts his head sideways.

 

“No you can’t.” Zayn laughs, shaking his head. “Who are you kidding? You can’t see jack-shit, you’re fucking _blind_.” Zayn teasingly reaches over to poke Liam’s waist.

 

“You couldn’t see yourself if you tried _.”_

 

Liam laughs when his side is tickled, curling into himself as he pushes Zayn’s hands away from him.

 

“STOP!”

 

After Zayn falls back, he picks Liam’s glasses up off the ground in between them before they’re crushed and makes him put them back on even though they’ve cracked in the middle. It almost seems intentional with everything he just said as he smirks at the sun.

 

He’s not sure if Zayn _knew_ what he was saying. When his subtle correlation to Liam’s sight and light comes up, it doesn’t seem like it was a coincidence. Like, he knew _exactly_ why Liam couldn’t see. Not even to see his own reflection.

 

That’s the thing about light. It doesn’t have a reflection or a shadow. Bounces around, slips through cracks, gets trapped in glass. But it’ll never cast out a virtual image of itself, even in a container. The sun never sees itself shining.

 

Zayn always calling him the sun to his moon wasn’t some cheesy joke afterall.

 

Nothing was ever a coincidence with Zayn. He knew more than he ever told anyone. Maybe more than he realised himself, as if his own secrets were a secret to him too.

 

 _“How do you know everything?”_ Liam always asked. But Zayn would never tell.

 

“You ruin the magic by revealing all your secrets, Leem.” Zayn advises him with a serious nudge.

 

“Keep it to yourself and people will always want it. In turn, they’ll always want _you_.”

 

It wasn’t necessarily advice about how to be popular. More like an incite into Zayn’s self-awareness. He knew everyone _wanted_ him. It seems like he had them all right where he needed them to be. In the dark and begging to see him more, unable to be comprehended except by his permission.

 

“Lust is an intrinsic part of human nature.” Liam adds to his philosophy to sound equally intelligent, repeating words he’s heard on this subject from his own memory.

 

“Wow, going all Oxford on me?” Zayn snorts with an impressed nod as Liam’s cheeks tinted, biting in his smile.

 

“That’s true. But I think it’s a curse on human nature to always want what we can’t have.”

 

“Why a curse?” Liam frowns now.

 

“Because… you can’t control lust. So it becomes this torturous.. _thing_ when something you want is right there in front of you, in the palm of your hands and you still can’t have it. Like how close the sky feels to us yet, we’ll never touch it. That’s why it always hurts to look at the sky. It’s something you’ll never reach. Only in a dream. It'll never be yours in reality.”

 

His fingers curled into Liam’s then and Liam’s heart stutters a little as his blush fully blossoms now with chills up his arms, smiling down at their intertwined hands between them like vines woven together. It was like Zayn’s touch could defy physics and make flowers bloom, even on Liam’s face. The rosy cheeks he always gave Liam.

 

He wanted to tell Zayn he already had him.

 

He can’t believe he never acknowledged how intimate this was.

 

Zayn really exposed himself a lot and Liam never returned the favour or let him know he felt it too. Sure, they were _close_ but, the line bewteen platonic and the sparks that went off in him when they were touching was blurry as hell.

 

It’s not like Zayn was very subtle. But strangely, it didn’t even feel romantic to Liam despite this entire setting easily being a date. Holding hands and finding any excuse to touch each other, watching the sun go down and coating everything with a dewy glow while talking about _wanting each other_ … it wasn’t exactly screaming friendship.

 

All they were missing for the full-on romance was a kiss.

 

“Wish I could see what you see.” Liam says after he takes off his glasses. “Know all your secrets.”

 

“No… you don’t.” Zayn shakes his head.

 

“Why wouldn’t I?”

 

“If you seen half the shit I see in my head, you’d think I was insane.”

 

“Doubt it.” Liam smiles now as he bumps Zayn’s side.

 

“I think you have a beautiful mind.”

 

“Shut up.” Zayn laughs as he pushed Liam away from him as if he was grossed out by a cheesy comment.

 

He acts like he doesn’t _live_ for compliments.

 

He’d act like he didn’t want to hear it, even if they both knew he was conceited and _loved_ being called beautiful. Because he knew it was true. All eyes were always going to be on him.

 

He was always going to be the most beautiful boy in the world, inside and out.Liam would be damned if he didn’t tell him just that every chance he got.

 

It wasn't a surprise that everyone wanted him. But only Liam got this side of him. Deep down, Liam already knew no one else would have him. Because he had Zayn too.

 

Liam falls on his back, laughing when Zayn climbs on top and sits on his stomach.

 

They watch the sun going down together just like that in silence, both retrieved into their own worlds again, Liam underneath while Zayn propped his elbow up on his knee and sat his chin inside his palm, messing up Liam’s curly hair with his other hand absently while they watched the sunset.

 

Liam takes this moment to fully take everything in now.

 

Zayn has on a black graphic t-shirt with a white Fender Jaguar across the front. Striped adidas joggers he rolled up one pants leg and sagged too much with matching trainers, topped off with a snapback he’s just bought today. It was, of course turned backwards that had the words **_FUCK OFF_ ** embroidered in big white letters over a red rose. This was the look of an adolescent boy that’d be damned if he didn’t pick out his own clothes.

 

Even Zayn’s chavvy years were stylishly bourgeois. He was about half a decade away from his first real leather jacket.

 

They’d just gone to a charity shop to find comics today and ended up buying a few tapes, a shirt and a hat for themselves instead. They had plans to watch _Scarface_ tonight at Zayn’s house.

 

That was the thing about small towns. There wasn’t stuff like a mall to shop at nearby. A thift shop and a community theatre hall were the only choices to go if you weren’t up for going a 20 minutes out of the way. It would make road trips an adventure for them later in life when they learned how to drive.

 

Liam looks down at his own thrifted shirt.

 

Old, advertising neon purple _RAVE_ across his chest. The sight of it _startles_ him as his mouth pops open in shock. This isn’t deja-vu. Deja-vu is seeing or feeling something you _think_ you seen before even though you haven’t.

 

This is a whole time-lapse in his memory of things he’s actually experienced. A massive chunk of his mind that hasn’t been touched in _years_ suddenly breaks the dam of his memory, all of it rushing out of it’s sealed vault in an avalanche of imagery.

 

For a moment, he falls into an ocean in his mind, completely drowning in it like water rushing into his lungs.

 

They’re overwhelming, ancient memories becoming fresh as daisies.

 

RAVE was a passé, junior retail store that was popular in the late 90s/early 2000s that could only be found the local outlet malls outside of town. All the cool kids shopped there for their fill of cheap, trendy clothes, way before the likes of Forever 21 and H&M came about.

 

The fact that Liam knows there isn’t a Rave probably anywhere in the _world_ is what’s shocking him to see a direct reminder of it again because he forgot the place even existed once they all disappeared worldwide ages ago. It’s like seeing a Blockbuster, or someone using a razr flip phone.

 

If he didn’t have any idea of where he was and what day it is before, he _definitely_ does now.

 

He can almost hear the old,[ mall music ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-lvvq88ScE) and the scent of consumerism echoing off it still, along with the perfume department smell still lingering in it’s fabric.

 

He bought it from the thrift shop today because it probably belonged to someone who worked at Rave a long time ago and the idea of wearing a shirt from a place all the hip kids got their digs from felt too cool to pass up on.

 

Plus, Zayn said he was a total babe in it. Actually, his exact words when Liam came out of the dressing room were,

 

_“10/10, would fuck.”_

 

He had to buy it.

 

Of course, Zayn always said Liam looked hot in whatever he tried on, just the same as he did with Harry and Louis when they’d tag along some days. But no matter how many times, it never lost its sincerity for Liam.

 

Not that he was a vain person who needed his ego boosted but… he was _deeply_ insecure about his appearance and he hated looking at his reflection so he could never look at himself in the mirror, even as a kid. Zayn knew that even though they never talked about it openly since Liam didn’t _officially_ know he had a personality disorder yet back then. His opinion actually did make Liam feel more confident.

 

It was only 99p.

 

This shirt held a lot of sentimental value. He only wore it a few times and he gave it to Zayn, and he went on to sleep in it every night. It feels like such a long time ago yet, it’s right here, right before his eyes.

 

Liam hasn’t been able to fit into it in years. Now, it fits like a dream.

 

As he thinks about all that now, he looks back at Zayn on top of him and he can’t for the life of him remember what year it is. He can even remember yesterday and the week before but, he knows these memories don’t belong here.

 

His search for proper context is all misplaced now. Old memories continuing to rush forward and sit up front where current memories have disappeared from, leaving him feeling out of place. His identity in this world has shifted backwards, everything just slightly off their proper marks so he’s only able to recognise how out of place he is here.

 

He can remember just about every minute detail of this day.

 

They spent all morning going up and down what became their favourite aisle of the only thrift shop in town: the 90s section. They didn’t find any comics but, they found something even better that makes this day a turning point for Liam and Zayn: old tapes of rock concerts next to the clothing racks.

 

He’s always thrown back into important memories.

 

This was the day they discovered rock music.

 

They bought [_Lithium_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkcJEvMcnEg) together with their combined allowances _._ It was a Nirvana record they found and played in Zayn’s room all day. Liam can’t _believe_ he almost forgot about it.

 

The name lithium stood out to Liam cause it was a drug he would soon be using as a mood stabiliser whenever he was “sick” for a few days. It was supposed to make you happy when you were sad (or in his case, feel something when he was numb). Rock bands worked wonders doing that for them.

 

It wasn’t something anyone would ever expect Liam and Zayn to be so into or bond over just looking at them but, it was perfect for them because it could be both anger and aggression then calm. Loud but quiet too. Chaotic but sometimes soft and romantic.

 

It could be happy and sad at the exact same time. Hidden sadness sung over a happy beat. It was the story of their lives. There was something kind of beautiful and ugly in that. It wasn’t perfect, and there was nothing more human.

 

Today was the first dose of alternative rock they ever got and the exact moment Zayn’s love and infatuation for dreamy rock stars that were a little dead inside began and would continue to be hooked for years to come.

 

It was the most depressing happy song they ever heard and it made them so happy singing along. They could both relate to it in their own ways because it fit both of them. Liam remembers screaming the lyrics at each other when they were jumping on Zayn’s bed with air guitar solos a few hours ago.

 

_‘I’m so ugly, but that’s okay cause so are you, we broke our mirrors, yeeeahh’_

 

It could've been taken as a romantic or platonic thing to say to one another despite what the heavy words meant about inner-beauty. Zayn had personal problems but, so did Liam. But their problems weren’t what made them perfect for each other. They didn't need to worry about that stuff when they were together.

 

He remembers never wanting to go home even if Zayn’s mother wouldn’t stop screaming at them to shut it off. Harry even asked if they ever got sick of each other.

 

The answer would always be no.

 

They spent the whole day together. After visiting a few random shops and harassing their neighbours with their loud new music, they had to walk Zayn’s sister to ballet around the corner, then chased after an ice cream van with Harry that they couldn’t catch. Ditching going after the van entirely and racing each other up the hill instead. Harry didn’t even _try_ to come up the hill, letting Liam and Zayn destroy their lungs by themselves. They would see him later today at their sleepover, along with a few others.

 

The new school year hadn’t started yet so, they spent most of their time running around town getting into trouble and ending their days on the hill to always catch the view of the sunset, then a sleepover at one of boys homes later.

 

Summer in Manningtree was always an adventure despite there not being much here. With the right people, a small town could have a whole world of fun.

 

Summer was his favourite time cause Liam was never home. They were boys who played too rough and had a hunger for running away to find something new in store for the day. Although it was before anything became life-threatening, if it came down to it, they still probably would’ve died for each other.

 

Tonight, all the boys were going to be at Zayn’s place, telling scary stories and watching Scarface until 1.a.m.

 

All these memories Liam feels like he forgot long ago, all compiled in perfect detail as if it all happened moments before he got here. But the weird thing that makes him feel out of place is stuff like his age or where he lived weren’t there, which is how he knows this is a dream. He couldn’t remember where he really belonged.

 

His home seemed to be right here with Zayn.

 

 _Whatever_ reason they came here for, he knows this is exactly what they needed.

 

He’s with Zayn and he’s been taken back to a time that doesn’t feel like ever existed. A blindingly happy time, experiencing a childhood that felt like happened to someone else.

 

He thinks this distant feeling of home from the past is nostalgia. It makes him feel safe.

 

Maybe that’s why Zayn always evokes this feeling inside him. Whenever he’s near, Liam can feel his presence and taste the nostalgia in the air. It reminds him of home, cause they’ve always had each other to come back to after a long day.

 

It almost makes him tear up with how thankful he is to have him. Thinking of how lost he’d be without Zayn and how unbearably lonely his life would’ve turned out if they never met. Even if everything is hell, he always had a pleasant place to escape to with his best friend. There’s no place either of them would rather be.

 

After a while, Liam moves Zayn’s side so he’s sitting on the ground again, wrapping his arm around his neck and squeezing with a giddy smile as he sits up, looking over at him.

 

Zayn doesn’t push him back or take his place on top of him again. He just stares at the lake. Liam’s smile falls away now as he watches Zayn.

 

The silence wasn’t usually this unsettling. But the _staring_ is. When he's gazing into that other world, it almost becomes like Zayn was in some type of trance. He remembers hating this so much. Because he suddenly feels like Zayn is a thousand miles away from him.

 

“Z, you’re gonna blind yourself.”

 

Zayn still wouldn’t look away, as if he hadn’t heard Liam.

 

This blank gaze goes down towards the woods, the weird parts of the woods no one went into, and it feels scarily familiar, filling Liam with anxiety. He instantly knows something’s wrong whenever Zayn checks out like this.

 

Liam didn’t want him to be down there in the woods. Because he thought he could see someone too and Zayn staring at it makes him think there really _is_ something down there now.

 

As he looks again himself, he thinks he can see the same shadow moving through the trees. He squints as it comes a little closer, into better view, in front of lake Logea.

 

Without a doubt now, there's someone walking around in the woods.

 

An eerie chill grips him as they both watch the blurred silhouette step into the shimmery light reflecting off the lake.

 

It’s his dad. He’s coming to get Liam for being gone all day long. He was the reason Liam never wanted to go home. It didn’t even _feel_ like home. Just an empty place he never wanted to be. No one was ever there. His mother was at work it seemed all night and most of the day. And his dad wasn’t home either. Even if he was sitting right next to Liam.

 

But it’s not Geoff this time. It’s just a boy and it throws Liam off because he _swore_ it was supposed to be an old man.

 

He doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. Even if Liam can’t remember an age for himself, he’d say he doesn’t look much older than them. There’s a skateboard in his hand he’s carrying as he walks on.

 

As if someone called his name, he stops walking and looks back.

 

Liam swears he looks _right_ at them. He’s stilled like a statue as he stands at the edge of the lake. Zayn stares at him like they’re having a conversation Liam can’t hear. They’re silhouettes are of two halfs of the same scene before Liam’s eyes, one surrounded by water and the other, hazy sunlight and it freaks him out.

 

There’s a pregnant pause before Liam does anything.

 

“Z,”

 

Liam tugs on his arm nervously. Like he’s about to suggest they run. That’s what happened last time.

 

They ran. Zayn grabbed him and ran like he was on fire.

 

This time, he doesn't.

 

Liam’s hand moves down to hold his and the touch of skin contact shocks them both, breaking his gaze as they both yelp when they pull away.

 

“Sorry!” Liam apologises quickly.

 

Zayn only shakes his head to himself as he rubs his hand with a grimace, his gaze dropped to his hands in his lap as he blinked, the profile of his face frowning.

 

He’s not scared like before. He looks _upset_.

 

Liam looks down towards the lake again, watching the other boy with furrowed brows as he’s gone back to walking away until he disappears into the woods, right into light like he’s exited through the doorway.

 

“Did’ya see that?” Liam asks now, astonished by seeing someone vanish into thin air but, Zayn isn’t even looking in that direction anymore.

 

Liam can’t tell if they were looking at the same thing. Zayn’s still looking down into his lap, the look of someone with a lot on his mind.

 

Even as they sat barely an inch apart, this distance between them always managed to be there.

 

“What’s wrong?” Liam asks him gently.

 

He didn’t usually ask. Zayn would never tell him what’s bothering him. Never reveals his secrets.

 

There was always something unknown about him, that world of his he went into when he went all quiet. It wasn’t always a beautiful place. Liam didn’t think he kept secrets just for the aesthetic.

 

You’d always wonder what he was thinking about or what lead him to a particular thought. The things he said would make anyone wonder, even the people that already knew him. Where was when he was up there in his head and where he had been before?

 

“Nothing.” Zayn _finally_ speaks, shaking his head and Liam doesn’t take that.

 

“You went all quiet for a while.”

 

“So?” Zayn shrugs, kicking at a flower absently and throwing it down the hill.

 

“You did too.”

 

Liam shakes his head, drawing his knees back up to his chest.

 

“But it’s different when you go quiet. You don't just ignore me. It's like you actually _go_ somewhere and disappear on me, and make me start to miss you. You go someplace else.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Zayn takes off his hat and shakes out his short black hair as he turns to the side a little.

 

“I don't mean to ignore you--”

 

“That's the thing.” Liam shrugs. “You're not. You're just some place else.”

 

“Someplace else?” Zayn asks him. “Where could I possibly go if I’m not in bloody Manningtree?”

 

“Somewhere… in your head.” Liam leans back on his hands now as he watches the sun, sadness pulling at his heart inside.

 

“It always feels like you’re gonna leave me.”

 

That’s… true. He could say this any given time and no matter what, still mean it the same context. Because he still felt the same way.

 

A soft breeze hits him with a pang of poignant, longing. It knocks the wind out of him all of the sudden, coiling up hot in his chest and tightening in his throat like he’s about to burst into tears. As if he just woke up some sad reminiscence from a past he forgot about.

 

He’d said this before. Maybe not this day but, he’s told Zayn that once before and it made Zayn _really_ angry.

 

He seemingly didn’t think much about it. How much it hurt inside or what it really meant to him until he hears it come out of his own mouth again and forming tears in his eyes now.

 

The abandonment Liam always disassociated from went deeper than his own daddy issues. He’s carried this inside him all the time from somewhere longer than that. He just put it in words.

 

Zayn was gonna leave him one day.

 

This feeling seemed to transcend time. Like maybe a sun somewhere lost its moon once before so, the ache in Liam’s core where his heart should be would always be there now.

 

There’s a hole in his chest. This ache inside him. He never realised where the ache came from until now. He usually tried to stay a million miles away from it. Now, he’s touching it again.

 

Zayn frowns with a grimace as he leans back too.

 

“That’s _ridiculous,_ Liam.” He scoffs. “I would never leave you. I _can’t_ leave. I’ve never been anywhere else but here.”

 

He shakes his head to himself, tutting his tongue against his lip at some private thought, as if he and Liam just had a very short argument.

 

“I’ve always been here. _Stuck_ in this dumb town. _Always_.”

 

That was true too. Liam no longer wonders why he always hated Manningtree so much. It’s now that Liam notices how often Zayn indicating to Liam that he was damned.

 

They both stay quiet for a while, a mutual silence passing between them again. Not necessarily angry or sad or either of them being absent again. Just there, sitting with them like an ugly elephant they both now refuse to acknowledge.

 

“We’re gonna get out of here.” Zayn says suddenly. “Me and you. Hazzy can come too just to make us laugh. We’re leaving here and never looking back. All over the world. I promise, you will have my full attention for the rest of my life. In exchange for yours.”

 

Sounded like he was proposing marriage.

 

His arm hugs Liam’s shoulder, rubbing Liam into him comfortingly. And it _did_ feel comforting. But it wouldn’t last.

 

Liam wants to believe him. That they’ll both make it out of this together but… he can’t. Maybe Zayn’s not necessarily lying to him right now but, he hasn’t looked Liam in the eye once today and for some reason, it feels heavier than usual. Liam’s ache won’t stop pulsing now.

 

Something was wrong here.

 

“What were you thinking about before? When you were looking down there.” Liam asks, because he genuinely needs to know before they brush past the topic.

 

Why it made them both suddenly want to run away.

 

He never got the chance to ask him before.

 

“I can’t explain it in words you’d understand.”

 

Liam shrugs a little.

 

“Try.”

 

Zayn chews on his lip as he takes his arm off Liam’s shoulder to bring his index finger up to his cheek, tracing over his jawline as he thinks about it with his brows wrinkled.

 

“You ever feel like you’re being watched?” He tries carefully.

 

It wasn’t so random. Liam felt that too.

 

But it was… _new._

 

This conversation _never_ happened. So Liam quickly nods along, his heart speeding up now.

 

“Yeah… I guess so.” He says with questionable confidence.

 

“Sometimes I think we can feel eyes.” He looks down towards the woods again. “Then I’ll look up and find someone there… _staring_.”

 

“No… not like that.” Zayn’s face screws up. “Not with eyes. Watched by someone that isn’t there.”

 

Liam’s brows draw together now as he watches Zayn again, taking a moment to try to understand what he means. He didn’t understand how, but Liam thinks they felt the same exact thing. Someone watching him closely his whole life. Someone he couldn’t see.

 

Instead of saying he doesn’t get what he’s saying or that he sounds crazy, Liam says,

 

“You feel like that?” _Too._

 

He doesn’t add the last part so agreeing with him over and over won’t sound so spineless. He forgot he did this a lot when they were kids. Made an extra effort to not sound too lame.

 

Zayn seems to think this over to himself, considering if that’s really how he feels.

 

“... yeah.” Zayn nods slowly, as if he’s just been convinced of something.

 

“Sometimes, I feel like I’m being watched by myself. Like he’s always following me around. He wants to be me.”

 

Liam blinks down towards the woods then, the same direction as Zayn as they sit shoulder to shoulder.

 

He doesn’t even have to ask Zayn how that makes any sense as Zayn goes on without further prompting. Now that he’s started talking, he seems more comfortable with it as everything seemed to flow, letting him think out loud instead of holding it in like he usually did, as if Liam just opened a door for everything to come out.

 

“I know it sounds crazy…. and doesn’t make any sense… maybe I’m just reading too deeply into _nothing--”_

 

 _“No,”_ Liam stops him from retreating into himself again,

 

“If it’s bothering you, you should talk about it. Even if you think it’s crazy, I’ll still listen.” His hand moves up Zayn’s back. Zayn relaxes a little as he thinks.

 

If Liam paid close enough attention to the patterns of his life, he would’ve realised he wasn’t the only one out of place and experiencing amnesia. Or the only one here dreaming when both of them closed their eyes and came to this world behind their eyelids with suspended consciousness.

 

“I think I can… feel _myself_ watching me from somewhere I can’t see… like through my memories or something.” Zayn elaborates as Liam’s hand clasps closed, squeezing tight like he can feel the chills moving down _Zayn’s_ spine.

 

The fine hairs on Zayn's arms are all standing, as if he's giving himself goosebumps.

 

“I don’t know how else to describe it. _Everything_ I do right now, whatever I’m doing, every detail of it is all being watched by me subconsciously. Some of my day is seen again in my head later, or _will_ be anyways. I’ll eventually think back to it and observe again maybe even years later and I become “him” who's watching me right now. Like watching a film of myself.” He pauses now as he blinks.

 

“I think I can feel what moments are being watched. It’s the only way I can possibly describe it.”

 

Zayn for sure never told Liam anything like that before. It was honestly a mind-fuck. Even though that made perfect sense if he really thought about it, Liam never thought about his actions like that. As something he’s going to remember and look back at one day. Something his future self was watching right now. He supposed everyone _was_ being watched by themselves.

 

He never thought of his own subconsciousness as it’s own separate being that watched his every move. Thinking a reflection can see and think about him just as easily as he can see _it_.

 

He never thought like that because Liam felt the complete opposite.

 

His relationship with himself was a little fucked up.

 

He was detached from everything he does now so it’s forgotten and purged from in his head later. Someone without a reflection at all. His past doesn’t become it’s own film to watch. It becomes something that seems like never happened to him.

 

“He” doesn’t want to be himself. _He_ wants to forget his life.

 

Liam doesn’t tell Zayn any of that. He couldn’t tell Zayn personal stuff that went too deep into him. There was stuff inside Liam he was too afraid to touch. Stuff he hadn’t been ready to admit to himself yet, which unfortunately kept Zayn in the dark a lot too. Most of Liam’s life was hidden from Zayn.

 

The most restropection Liam ever got was from his therapist, the only person he actually came close to telling all of this stuff about, even more than Harry.

 

He didn’t know why he didn’t want Zayn to know he could leave his body behind or how much of his life he ends up forgetting or anything else that was wrong with him inside. How fucked his personality really was. How lost he felt often times and how lonely it was to know that even his own soul wanted to abandon him. Not even his reflection wanted to see him. Not his dad. Not his peers. Now, he feels like he’s gonna lose Zayn too.

 

He thinks it might be because he didn’t want to even know that himself. He’d rather forget it.

 

“That’s pretty wicked.” He says honestly, instead of the rest.

 

“I dunno…” Zayn shakes his head with a frown. “Feels like he’s gone now.”

 

Liam re pictures the boy at the lake who disappeared, getting a bad feeling about the correlation now. Like… the other Zayn that’s there but not really there, _left._

 

“Is that a good thing?”

 

Zayn tosses another flower head down the hill.

 

“Who knows.” He sighs.

 

“Does it feel good?”

 

Now Liam does his therapist thing.

 

Zayn snorts a little, shaking his head like he’s both amused and astonished they’re having this conversation.

 

“I dunno.” He says simply after a long pause. “Feels kind of… empty.”

 

That didn’t sound very good to Liam.

 

“You know, I love how we can do this.” Zayn gestures between them now. “Sit here and be quiet with you just as much as I love talking to you. It’s never uncomfortable. It’s always relieving getting shit off your chest.”

 

Liam openly agreed with him this time. He enjoyed listening to Zayn get stuff off his chest.

 

“When I’m with everyone else, we always have to be talking. It’s not even conversation. Just _noise_ about dumb shit I don’t even care about. It’s _so_ disengaging. But I don’t have that with you. I don’t have to tell you everything for you to understand me, even if I don’t say anything at all and it feels better cause you always know what to say, even if it’s nothing. No one knows that feeling better than you. There’s no one else in the world I’d rather share silence with. No one out there like you, not even close.”

 

Liam smiles really wide as warmth skirt across his cheeks, touched that Zayn felt that way.  

 

Moments like this always remind Liam that he didn’t have to wonder why Zayn bothered. Zayn told him exactly what he meant to him and Liam felt the same way, even in a starry eyed world of dreams. It still felt the same.

 

There wasn’t anything more intimate than being understood without words, as if silence was another language in itself only they knew. Liam didn’t have to tell him everything because Zayn already knew him too.

 

“That means a lot to me Z.” Liam tells him as he wipes his eyes as his chest burns. “You have no idea how much that means to me.”

 

Zayn’s head leaned into Liam with a content sigh. It’s funny how he could make Liam experience feelings beyond his years too. He’s never known what it was like to not be in love with someone.

 

They sat there and soaked in the sun until it finally got low enough that the sky began to turn pink.

 

“Gosh, it’s _beautiful_.” Liam was on his belly now, squishing his cheeks as he leaned on his elbows. Zayn was too.

 

“You know, I had a dream about this.”  Zayn gestures towards the sky.

 

“Haven’t stopped thinking about it since.”

 

Liam tilts his head sideways as he looks between the horizon and Zayn.

 

“Thinking about what?”

 

[ See You Again ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZE62LpaqHg)

 

Zayn finally looks back at Liam with a warm smile as his nose wrinkled, his nose buried into his elbow.

 

His eyes fell over every part of Liam’s face, specs of the sunlight pooled in them as gold as the ring around the sun as they land on Liam’s eyes. It’s the first time they’ve actually looked at each other since they came up here.

 

He’s got a healthy tan. And he’s so, _so_ , young.

 

No tattoos or piercings in sight. Fresh-faced like the children they still were.

 

His eyes on Liam’s make him feel overwhelmingly calm. They were together here. There was nothing to worry about what was waiting for them at the bottom of this hill or who was watching. It’s like a fantasy that happens in slow motion. One he’s not ready to wake up from yet.

 

It feels like it’s been hours now but when Liam opens his eyes and wakes up again, reality will be back in motion and they’ll be thrown into hell. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever see Zayn like this again. He only wishes they could go backwards now.

 

They'll be all grown up and this will morph into a few seconds of something that never really happened no matter how real it feels.

 

Maybe he can turn a dream into reality.

 

He wanted to kiss him.

 

Liam could tell he wanted to. Every day they sat here on this hill and watched the sun go down together, Zayn wanted to kiss Liam. That’s all he dreamed about. Liam can see it in his eyes now, trying to hide his blushing cheeks.

 

But he didn’t.

 

He turns his eyes away from Liam instead.

 

“Nothing.”

 

_Lie._

 

Zayn snickers into his arm as he squeezed his eyes close. This was a laugh that said he had a secret he really wasn’t going to tell Liam this time.

 

Liam already knows his secret now. It's all over his face.  

 

He dreamed they were kissing.  

 

“Please tell me.” Liam urges.

 

Zayn laughs, shaking his head no.

 

“I’m not thinking about anything right now--”

 

_“Liar.”_

 

Zayn looks back at Liam again with offended brows drawing together.

 

“I’m not!” He shouts with a loud laugh.

 

 _“You are such a LI-YAR.”_ Liam sings as he rolls his eyes and Zayn sits up and turns his body towards him now.

 

Liam grabs his hands before they can attack his sides, laughing as he sits up to with their hands pushing against each other between them.

 

“Okay smarty pants. Tell me what I’m thinking about.”

 

He searches in Liam’s eyes for a moment as he shakes his hands back and forth in the middle before looking at his lips, something bright and mischievous in his look that made Liam blush a little. He pushes against him as Zayn leans towards him, moving like he’s about to start fighting him.

 

 _‘Go on, kiss me.’_ Liam _dares_ him, as if he can will Zayn to do it with his mind.

 

He now wonders what would’ve happened if that was how it went instead of them going to war and tumbling around on the hill until the sun went down. If they just kissed until it got dark instead.

 

It’s so strange how he still feels the same way. Too nervous to do anything but stare at him. All these times they didn’t take a chance. Never chanced something that could’ve been because of _fear_.

 

There was nothing to be afraid of here.

 

“Kissing.” Liam says.

 

Zayn blinks once as he freezes.

 

_“...what?”_

 

“That’s all you ever think about.” Liam shrugs with a laugh at Zayn’s mouth, unable to close.

 

“You’re gonna be kissing Louis or Niall or someone else under covers when you think everyone is sleeping tonight--”

 

“That’s not true.” Zayn frowns now but, Liam continues.

 

“Yeah it is.” he goads.

 

“You always ditch me and Harry for them. You love Louis more than you like your own best friends.”

 

“Liam, that’s _not_ true.” Zayn’s voice fits firmer in his words as their hands fall in between each other now.

 

“I love you. You know I’ve always loved you, that’s so _not_ funny. Why would you even say something like that?”

 

The sky behind them was beginning to turn darker as the stormy clouds finally made their way over, rolling in as the sun finally disappeared below the horizon. It gives off its final rays to bid farewell to Manningtree for the day.

 

They should be getting home now.

 

“Cause you lie to me.”

 

Zayn was only entirely offended by this for a moment. He squints a little now, smirking as he catches on that Liam is only teasing him.

 

_“Liar, liar pants on fire--”_

 

 _“Come here.”_ Zayn cuts him off as he leans in and pushed his lips against Liam’s cheek.

 

He’s squeezing his hands as Liam laughs and flails back with Zayn squishing his face.

 

 _“Gross,”_ He pushes Zayn away by his shoulder but, Zayn keeps peppering his cheek over and over, making loud smacking sounds as his arms hugged around Liam’s waist.

 

_“You're so gay,”_

 

Zayn falls over him as he laughs into Liam.

 

At the last second, Liam stops pushing his shoulders and brings them in instead as he turns his cheek so their lips lock, pushing his lips against Zayn’s with a smile. His reaction is _priceless._

 

As soon as they touch, their lips are shocked so it makes them both yelp and pull apart as Zayn gasps in surprise, his eyes growing _wide_ and his face quickly turning red, stuck between horrified and stunned.

 

Liam laughs as he touches his own lip with his fingers, smiling at the tingles there as he looks down at his hand.

 

“Well, that _stung,”_ He snorts to himself.

 

Zayn, still wearing his look of shock, starts to gape at Liam’s calm reaction to being kissed, as if he terrified cause Liam’s _not_ okay with that.

 

“I’m _so_ sorry,” Zayn backs off him now that he thinks he’s gone too far, “I didn’t mean to--”

 

“Kiss me?” Liam finished.

 

Zayn’s brows come together in confusion as he looks Liam up and down.

 

“I mean… technically, you kissed me so…”

 

Liam leans in and tastes his flower petal lips again. He tries to be smooth with it and just giving him a quick peck but, Liam has no guile and no game.

 

It’s the dorkiest kiss ever, what happens when Liam leans in instead of Zayn. He moves in so fast, their teeth clash and he startles Zayn as he jerks back. But Liam keeps leaning in until their lips melt for a few seconds enough for the taste to linger on his tongue when he sucks in Zayn’s bottom lip without the shock this time.

 

His stomach is quivering with nervous butterflies the entire time until he pushes Zayn down on his back and leans over him.

 

 _“Now I did.”_ He whispers with a cheeky wink before he springs up to his feet.

 

Zayn’s gapes with a wide grin, stars in his eyes as bright as Liam’s cheesy smile.

 

“Are you _fuckin’_ kidding me?” He yells, sticking out his leg to trip him when Liam tries to run away but Liam’s too quick this time.

 

“Who taught you how to do that?” He suddenly sounds jealous.

 

“You did!” He leaps over Zayn’s leg like a ballerina, does a fancy pirouette on his heel, then takes off down through the grass, laughing on his merry way.

 

“Your turn! Kiss me back if you can catch me!”

 

 _“You steal my heart and then run away with it?!?”_ Zayn shrieks with laughter as he gets up and chases after Liam.

 

_“You could at least buy me dinner first you prick!”_

 

Liam yells aloud with his head back. It's not even a laugh. He just needs to scream. It’s the only sound he can muster to express how he feels right now. Let it all out just like the explosion in his heart. He can hear Zayn’s too, letting him know he had it inside him too.

 

_"Where are we going!?!"_

 

_"I dunno! To the end of the world!"_

 

As they run through the grass, thousands of butterflies kick up into the air, their mutual dream visualising what's in their stomachs in a cascade of every colour of the rainbow surrounds them. Liam's glad butterflies love Zayn as much as he does.

 

Their laughter gets ate up in the thunder above.

 

He’s speeding down the hill as fast as he can, unable to wipe the grin off his buzzing lips.

 

He ran for miles. The longer he ran, the less butterflies he saw and darker it became, until they all disappear and the ominous clouds completely blanket the sky now. This hill was longer than expected.

 

There's no end.

 

“LIMA!” Zayn calls out after him.

 

His voice sounds different. He just called him _Lima_.

 

Liam’s eyes bulge, trying to skid to a stop once he realises Zayn’s really _here_.

 

“ _Lima come back!”_ His voice seems to be getting further away.

 

_“Li…”_

 

Zayn’s voice fades completely, and Liam can’t turn around.

 

His legs keep carrying him down the hill and where he’s approaching…

 

“Oh my God,”

 

The _real_ lurker in the woods has arrived. He finally found Geoff.

 

He’s standing at the bottom of the hill, waiting and with the speed Liam’s going towards him at, it’s impossible to break the momentum as this dream morphs into a nightmare, thunder banging above him as the weather has also taken a turn for the absolute worse.

 

Not even the lightning strikes at the ground around him light up the voids in Geoff’s eyes. Liam jumps over every strike, ducking so his head isn’t seared off.

 

The Gods and this goddamn _lightning_ shit. They're not cursing _Liam_. He's too fast.

 

Geoff’s face always gave away nothing. It was like looking into the eyes of a corpse. Staring at him for too long always made Liam feel like he was looking at his own dead body.

 

Empty eyes. Hollow and lifeless. Soulless. Just how it looks when he looks at his own body after leaving it.

 

The wind whips around, almost knocking Liam off his feet. But he keeps going, even as he tries to lift his legs off the ground or throw himself off this collision course but, it’s useless.

 

There’s no other way to go but forward.

 

Everything is blurred but his dad in front of him and suddenly as Liam stares at his dark face… he asks himself what he's afraid of.

 

There's no one there. No one but the edge of a cliff. So there's nothing to fear.

 

Everything about him has been _fear_. But it does nothing but hold him back.

 

Someone once told him if he lets go of fear, he’ll fly.

 

Those words awaken something inside Liam as more memories begin to resurface.

 

He remembered his words. So Lux is still alive. The joy he suddenly feels in this makes the fear disappear totally.

 

Geoff suddenly doesn’t look so scary anymore. As he gets closer, he realises he’s just a child afraid of his own shadow. But he’s not afraid anymore, nor is he a child.

 

He makes the wind pick up, moving through his hair and coating over his skin as his legs move like liquid across the air. Free to move along wherever he feels, like his feet don’t even have to touch the ground.

 

He chooses to keep moving forward.

 

He flies down the hill and goes straight through the shadow like passing through smoke as a new wake of determination sets. He leaves the shadow of his lost dad behind in his rearview mirror and descends out of this astral plane.

 

He throws himself downward to turn over on his belly and lets go completely after the ground vanishes.

 

He free-falls straight down as if he’s soared clear across a cliff, zipping through the air at speed that could probably conduct lightning. He keeps his nose down and his eyes squeezed close, feeling the charge of energy lighting up all around him again.

 

The clouds carry something inside him that’s lighter than air, through the sky when he follows the path at full speed. He’s not sure where he’s going now but, he knows it’s the right direction. It pulls him to follow it down, straight through heavier, more dense clouds below, thunder rumbling around him.

 

He realises he’s following his tether.

 

Spray covers all over his skin as he passes through the next layer, a more palpable material that feels like water. It’s like he’s swimming through the clouds as he plummets right into Earth, or at least solid ground again, face down and he can feel his destination approaching.

 

He’s only done this once. No slippery shoes this time. Hopefully, he doesn’t break his legs.

 

Right before he touches down, he lifts up with his chest to kick his legs out below him as hard and fast as he can to catch himself upright. The impact feels and sounds like he’s just kicked through shards of glass from the sound of everything around him shattering, like breaking through a mirror.

 

It’s like he’s been flying across a wire full of electricity, channeling through the air. And finally, after exiting the dream state, Liam arrives on a physical plane. He can’t say he knows what he expects but, Zayn’s here and that boy has got about 85 demons chasing after him, along with all of hell. But that’s okay because Liam probably does too now.

 

Maybe if they really did break they’re mirrors, their problems would all cease to exist.

 

He couldn’t say they weren’t a perfect match. Maybe not a match made in heaven or hell. Someplace else they met in the middle. 

 


End file.
